The dream : a novel

THE DREAM

If Mr. Wells has also written the following novels:

THE WHEELS OF CHANCE
LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM
KIPPS

TONO-BUNGAY
ANN VERONICA
MR. POLLY

THE NEW MACHIAVELLI
MARRIAGE

THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS

THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN

BEALBY

THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT

MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH

THE SOUL OF A BISHOP

JOAN AND PETER

THE UNDYING FIRE

THE SECRET PLACES OF THE HEART

If The following fantastic and imaginative romances:

THE TIME MACHINE

THE WONDERFUL VISIT

THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU

THE INVISIBLE MAN

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

THE SLEEPER AWAKES

THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON

THE SEA LADY

THE FOOD OF THE GODS

IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET

THE WAR IN THE AIR

THE WORLD SET FREE

MEN LIKE GODS

Numerous short stories collected under the following titles:
THE STOLEN BACILLUS
THE PLATTNER STORY
TALES OF SPACE AND TIME
TWELVE STORIES AND A DREAM

Tf The same short stories will also be found in three volumes:
TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED
TALES OF LIFE AND ADVENTURE
TALES OF WONDER

IT A Series of books on social, religious and political questions:

ANTICIPATIONS (1900)

A MODERN UTOPIA
THE FUTURE IN AMERICA
NEW WORLDS FOR OLD
FIRST AND LAST THINGS
GOD THE INVISIBLE KING
THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY
RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS
THE SALVAGING OF CIVILISATION
WASHINGTON AND THE HOPE OF PEACE
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD
THE STORY OF A GREAT SCHOOLMASTER

If And two little books about children’s play, called:

FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS

THE DREAM

A NOVEL

BY

H. G. WELLS

Thomas

J. Bata

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THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1924

All rights reserved

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Copyright, 1923 and 1924,
By H. G. WELLS.

Set up and electrotyped.
Published April, 1924.

Printed in the United States of America by

THE FERRIS PRINTING COMPANY, NEW YORK.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER THE FIRST

The Excursion. 3

CHAPTER THE SECOND

The Beginning of the Dream.15

CHAPTER THE THIRD

Misfortunes Come Upon the Smith Family . 60

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

The Widow Smith Moves to London .... 97

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

Fanny Discovers Herself . 159

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

Marriage in War Time.229

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH
Love and Death .271

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

The Epilogue.312

v

Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation

https://archive.org/details/dreamnovelOOOOwell

Part I

How Harry Mortimer Smith
Was Made

THE DREAM

CHAPTER THE FIRST

THE EXCURSION

§ 1

Sarnac had worked almost continuously for the
better part of a year upon some very subtle chemical
reactions of the nervous cells of the sympathetic
system. His first enquiries had led to the opening
out of fresh and surprising possibilities, and these
again had lured him on to still broader and more
fascinating prospects. He worked perhaps too
closely; he found his hope and curiosity unimpaired,
but there was less delicacy of touch in his manipula¬
tion, and he w T as thinking less quickly and accu¬
rately. He needed a holiday. He had come to the
end of a chapter in his work and wished to brace
himself for a new beginning. Sunray had long hoped
to be away with him; she, too, was at a phase in
her work when interruption was possible, and so the
two went off together to wander among the lakes
and mountains.

Their companionship was at a very delightful
stage. Their close relationship and their friendship
was of old standing, so that they were quite at their
ease with one another, yet they were not too familiar

3

4

THE DREAM

to have lost the keen edge of their interest in each
other’s proceedings. Sunray was very much in love
with Sarnac and glad, and Sarnac was always happy
and pleasantly exalted when Sunray was near him.
Sunray was the richer-hearted and cleverer lover.
They talked of everything in the world but Sarnac’s
work because that had to rest and grow fresh again.
Of her own work Sunray talked abundantly. She
had been making stories and pictures of happiness
and sorrow in the past ages of the world, and she was
full of curious speculations about the ways in which
the ancestral mind has thought and felt.

They played with boats upon the great lake for
some days, they sailed and paddled and drew up
their canoe among the sweet-scented rushes of the
islands and bathed and swam. They went from one
guest-house to another upon the water and met
many interesting and refreshing people. In one
house an old man of ninety-eight was staying: he
was amusing his declining years by making statuettes
of the greatest beauty and humour; it was wonderful
to see the clay take shape in his hands. Moreover,
he had a method of cooking the lake fish that was
very appetising, and he made a great dish of them
so that everyone who was dining in the place could
have some. And there w T as a musician w T ho made
Sunray talk about the days gone by, and afterwards
he played music with his own hands on a clavier to
express the ancient feelings of men. He played one
piece that was, he explained, two thousand years
old; it was by a man named Chopin, and it was
called the Revolutionary Etude. Sunray could not
have believed a piano capable of such passionate

THE DREAM

5

resentment. After that he played grotesque and
angry battle music and crude marching tunes from
those half-forgotten times, and then he invented
wrathful and passionate music of his own.

Sunray sat under a golden lantern and listened to
the musician and watched his nimble hands, but
Sarnac was more deeply moved. He had not heard
very much music in his life, and this player seemed
to open shutters upon deep and dark and violent
things that had long been closed to mankind. Sar¬
nac sat, cheek on hand, his elbow on the parapet of
the garden wall, looking across the steely blue of
the lake at the darkling night sky at the lower end.
The sky had been starry, but a monstrous crescent
of clouds like a hand that closes was now gathering
all the stars into its fist of darkness. Perhaps there
would be rain to-morrow. The lanterns hung still,
except that ever and again a little shiver of the air
set them swaying. Now and then a great white
moth would come fluttering out of the night and
beat about among the lanterns for a time and pass
away. Presently it would return again or another
moth like it would come. Sometimes there would
be three or four of these transitory phantoms; they
seemed to be the only insects abroad that night.

A faint ripple below drew his attention to the light
of a boat, a round yellow light like a glowing orange,
which came gliding close up to the terrace wall out
of the blue of the night. There was the sound of
a paddle being shipped and a diminishing drip of
water, but the people in the boat sat still and
listened until the musician had done altogether.

6

THE DREAM

Then they came up the steps to the terrace and
asked the master of the guest-house for rooms for
the night. They had dined at a place farther up
the lake.

Four people came by this boat. Two were brother
and sister, dark handsome people of southern origin,
and the others were fair women, one blue-eyed and
one with hazel eyes, who were clearly very much
attached to the brother and sister. They came and
talked about the music and then of a climbing ex¬
pedition they had promised themselves in the great
mountains above the lakes. The brother and sis¬
ter were named Radiant and Starlight, and their
work in life, they explained, was to educate ani¬
mals; it was a business for which they had an
almost instinctive skill. The two fair girls, Willow
and Firefly, were electricians. During the last
few days Sunray had been looking ever and again
at the glittering snowfields and desiring them;
there was always a magic call for her in snowy
mountains. She joined very eagerly in the mountain
talk, and it was presently suggested that she and
Sarnac should accompany these new acquaintances
up to the peaks they had in mind. But before
they went on to the mountains, she and Sarnac
wanted to visit some ancient remains that had
recently been excavated in a valley that came down
to the lake from the east. The four new-comers
were interested in what she told them about these
ruins, and altered their own plans to go with her
and Sarnac to see them. Then afterwards all six
would go into the mountains.

THE DREAM

7

§ 2

These ruins were rather more than two thousand
years old.

There were the remains of a small old town,
a railway station of some importance, and a rail¬
way tunnel which came right through the moun¬
tains. The tunnel had collapsed, but the excavators
had worked along it and found several wrecked trains
in it which had evidently been packed with soldiers
and refugees. The remains of these people, much
disturbed by rats and other vermin, lay about in
the trains and upon the railway tracks. The tun¬
nel had apparently been blocked by explosives
and these trainloads of people entombed. After¬
wards the town itself and all its inhabitants had
been destroyed by poison-gas, but what sort of
poison-gas it was the investigators had still to decide.
It had had an unusual pickling effect, so that many
of the bodies were not so much skeletons as mum¬
mies; and there were books, papers, papier mache
objects or the like in a fair state of preservation in
many of the houses. Even cheap cotton goods
were preserved, though they had lost all their colour.
For some time after the great catastrophe this
part of the world must have remained practically
uninhabited. A landslide had presently blocked
the lower valley and banked back the valley waters
so as to submerge the town and cover it with a fine
silt and seal up the tunnel very completely. Now
the barrier had been cut through and the valley
drained again, and all these evidences of one of the
characteristic disasters of the last war period in

8 THE DREAM

man’s history had been brought back to the light
once more.

The six holiday-makers found the visit to this
place a very vivid experience, almost too vivid for
their contentment. On Sarnac’s tired mind it made
a particularly deep impression. The material col¬
lected from the town had been arranged in a long
museum gallery of steel and glass. There were
many almost complete bodies; one invalid old
woman, embalmed by the gas, had been replaced in
the bed from which the waters had floated her, and
there was a shrivelled little baby put back again in
its cradle. The sheets and quilts were bleached and
browned, but it was quite easy to see what they had
once been like. The people had been taken by sur¬
prise, it seemed, while the midday meal was in
preparation; the tables must have been set in many
of the houses; and now, after a score of centuries
beneath mud and weeds and fishes, the antiquaries
had disinterred and reassembled these old machine-
made cloths and plated implements upon the tables.
There were great stores of such pitiful discoloured
litter from the vanished life of the past.

The holiday-makers did not go far into the tunnel;
the suggestion of things there were too horrible for
their mood, and Sarnac stumbled over a rail and cut
his hand upon the jagged edge of a broken railway-
carriage window. The wound pained him later, and
did not heal so quickly as it should have done. It
was as if some poison had got into it. It kept him
awake in the night.

For the rest of the day the talk was all of the ter¬
rible days of the last wars in the world and the

THE DREAM

9

dreadfulness of life in that age. It seemed to Firefly
and Starlight that existence must have been almost
unendurable, a tissue of hate, terror, want and dis¬
comfort, from the cradle to the grave. But Radiant
argued that people then were perhaps no less happy
and no happier than himself; that for everyone in
every age there was a normal state, and that any
exaltation of hope or sensation above that was hap¬
piness and any depression below it misery. It did
not matter where the normal came. “They went
to great intensities in both directions,” he said.
There was more darkness in their lives and more
pain, but not more unhappiness. Sunray was in¬
clined to agree with him.

But Willow objected to Radiant’s psychology.
She said that there could be permanently depressed
states in an unhealthy body or in a life lived under
restraint. There could be generally miserable crea¬
tures just as there could be generally happy crea¬
tures.

“Of course,” interjected Sarnac, “given a stand¬
ard outside themselves.”

“But why did they make such wars?” cried Fire¬
fly. “Why did they do such horrible things to one
another? They were people like ourselves.”

“No better,” said Radiant, “and no worse. So
far as their natural quality went. It is not a hun¬
dred generations ago.”

“Their skulls were as big and well shaped.”

“Those poor creatures in the tunnel!” said Sar¬
nac. “Those poor wretches caught in the tunnel!
But everyone in that age must have felt caught in
a tunnel.”

10

THE DREAM

After a time a storm overtook them and inter¬
rupted their conversation. They were going up
over a low pass to a guest-house at the head of the
lake, and it was near the crest of the pass that the
storm burst. The lightning was tremendous and
a pine-tree was struck not a hundred yards away.
They cheered the sight. They were all exhilarated
by the elemental clatter and uproar; the rain was
like a whip on their bare, strong bodies and the
wind came in gusts that held them staggering and
laughing, breathlessly unable to move forward.
They had doubts and difficulties with the path;
for a time they lost touch with the blazes upon the
trees and rocks. Followed a steady torrent of rain,
through which they splashed and stumbled down
the foaming rocky pathway to their resting-place.
They arrived wet as from a swim and glowing; but
Sarnac, who had come behind the others with Sun-
ray, was tired and cold. The master of this guest¬
house drew his shutters and made a great fire for
them with pine-knots and pine-cones while he pre¬
pared a hot meal.

After a while they began to talk of the excavated
town again and of the shrivelled bodies lying away
there under the electric light of the still glass-walled
museum, indifferent for evermore to the sunshine
and thunderstorms of life without.

“Did they ever laugh as we do?” asked Willow.
“For sheer happiness of living?”

Sarnac said very little. He sat close up to the
fire, pitching pine-cones into it and watching them
flare and crackle. Presently he got up, confessed
himself tired, and went away to his bed.

THE DREAM

11

§ 3

It rained hard all through the night and until
nearly midday, and then the weather cleared. In
the afternoon the little party pushed on up the val¬
ley towards the mountains they designed to climb,
but they went at a leisurely pace, giving a day and
a half to what was properly only one day’s easy
walking. The rain had refreshed everything in the
upper valley and called out a great multitude of
flowers.

The next day was golden and serene.

In the early afternoon they came to a plateau
and meadows of asphodel, and there they sat down
to eat the provisions they had brought with them.
They were only two hours’ climb from the moun¬
tain-house in which they were to pass the night,
and there was no need to press on. Sarnac was
lazy; he confessed to a desire for sleep; in the night
he had been feverish and disturbed by dreams of
men entombed in tunnels and killed by poison-gas.
The others were amused that anyone should want
to sleep in the daylight, but Sunray said she would
watch over him. She found a place for him on the
sward, and Sarnac laid down beside her and went
to sleep with his cheek against her side as suddenly
and trustfully as a child goes to sleep. She sat up
—as a child’s nurse might do—enjoining silence on
the others by gestures.

“After this he will be well again,” laughed Radi¬
ant, and he and Firefly stole off in one direction,
while Willow and Starlight went off in another to
climb a rocky headland near at hand, from which

12

THE DREAM

they thought they might get a very wide and per¬
haps a very beautiful view of the lakes below.

For some time Sarnac lay quite still in his sleep
and then he began to twitch and stir. Sunray bent
down attentively with her warm face close to his.
He was quiet again for a time and then he moved
and muttered, but she could not distinguish any
words. Then he rolled away from her and threw
his arms about and said, “I can’t stand it. I can’t
endure it. Nothing can alter it now. TAu’re un¬
clean and spoilt.” She took him gently and drew
him into a comfortable attitude again, just as a
nurse might do. “Dear,” he whispered, and in his
sleep reached out for her hand. . . .

When the others came back he had just awak¬
ened.

He was sitting up with a sleepy expression and
Sunray was kneeling beside him with her hand on
his shoulder. “Wake up!” she said.

He looked at her as if he did not know her and
then with puzzled eyes at Radiant. “Then there is
another life! ” he said at last.

“Sarnac!” cried Sunray, shaking him. “Don’t
you know me?”

He passed a hand over his face. “Yes,” he said
slowly. “Your name is Sunray. I seem to remem¬
ber. Sunray. ... Not Hetty- No. Though

you are very like Hetty. Queer! And mine—
mine is Sarnac.

“Of course! I am Sarnac.” He laughed at Wil¬
low. “But I thought I was Harry Mortimer
Smith,” he said. “I did indeed. A moment ago I

THE DREAM 13

was Henry Mortimer Smith. . . . Henry Mortimer
Smith.”

He looked about him. “Mountains,” he said,
“sunshine, white narcissus. Of course, we walked
up here this very morning. Sunray splashed me at
a waterfall. ... I remember it perfectly. . . .
And yet I was in bed—shot. I was in bed. . . .
A dream? ... Then I have had a dream, a whole
lifetime, two thousand years ago!”

“What do you mean?” said Sunray.

“A lifetime—childhood, boyhood, manhood. And
death. He killed me. Poor rat!—he killed me!”

“A dream?”

“A dream—but a very vivid dream. The reallest
of dreams. If it was a dream. ... I can answer
all your questions now, Sunray. I have lived
through a whole life in that old world. I know. . . .

“It is as though that life was still the real one
and this only a dream. ... I was in a bed. Five
minutes ago I was in bed. I was dying. . . . The
doctor said, ‘He is going.’ And I heard the rustle
of my wife coming across the room. . .

“Your wife!” cried Sunray.

“Yes—my wife—Milly.”

Sunray looked at Willow with raised eyebrows
and a helpless expression.

Sarnac stared at her, dreamily puzzled. “Milly,”
he repeated very faintly. “She was by the window.”

For some moments no one spoke.

Radiant stood with his arm on Firefly’s shoul¬
der.

“Tell us about it, Sarnac. Was it hard to die?”

14

THE DREAM

“I seemed to sink down and down into quiet—
and then I woke up here.”

“Tell us now, while it is still so real to you.”

“Have we not planned to reach the mountain-
house before nightfall?” said Willow, glancing at
the sun.

“There is a little guest-house here, within five
minutes’ walk of us,” said Firefly.

Radiant sat down beside Sarnac. “Tell us your
dream now. If it fades out presently or if it is
uninteresting, we can go on; but if it is entertain¬
ing, we can hear it out and sleep down here to¬
night. It is a very pleasant place here, and there
is a loveliness about those mauve-coloured crags
across the gorge, a faint mistiness in their folds,
that I could go on looking at for a week without
impatience. Tell us your dream, Sarnac.”

He shook his friend. “Wake up, Sarnac!”

Sarnac rubbed his eyes. “It is so queer a story.
And there will be so much to explain.”

He took thought for a while.

“It will be a long story.”

“Naturally, if it is a whole life.”

“First let me get some cream and fruit from the
guest-house for us all,” said Firefly, “and then let
Sarnac tell us his dream. Five minutes, Sarnac,
and I will be back here.”

“I will come with you,” said Radiant, hurrying
after her.

This that follows is the story Sarnac told.

CHAPTER THE SECOND

THE BEGINNING OF THE DREAM

§ 1

“This dream of mine began,” he said, “as all our
lives begin, in fragments, in a number of discon¬
nected impressions. I remember myself lying on a
sofa, a sofa covered with a curious sort of hard,
shiny material with a red and black pattern on it,
and I was screaming, but I do not know why I
screamed. I discovered my father standing in the
doorway of the room looking at me. He looked very
dreadful; he was partially undressed in trousers and
a flannel shirt and his fair hair was an unbrushed
shock; he was shaving and his chin was covered
with lather. He was angry because I was screaming.
I suppose I stopped screaming, but I am not sure.
And I remember kneeling upon the same hard red
and black sofa beside my mother and looking out of
the window—the sofa used to stand with its back
to the window-sill—at the rain falling on the road¬
way outside. The window-sill smelt faintly of
paint; soft bad paint that had blistered in the sun.
It was a violent storm of rain and the road was an
ill-made road of a yellowish sandy clay. It was
covered with muddy water and the storming rainfall
made a multitude of flashing bubbles, that drove
along before the wind and burst and gave place to
others.

15

16

THE DREAM

“ ‘Look at ’em, dearie/ said my mother. ‘Like
sojers.’

“I think I was still very young when that hap¬
pened, but I was not so young that I had not often
seen soldiers with their helmets and bayonets march¬
ing by.”

“That,” said Radiant, “was some time before the
Great War, then, and the Social Collapse.”

“Some time before,” said Sarnac. He considered.
“Twenty-one years before. This house in which I
was born was less than two miles from the great
military camp of the British at Lowcliff in England,
and Lowcliff railway station was only a few hundred
yards away. ‘Sojers’ were the most conspicuous
objects in my world outside my home. They were
more brightly coloured than other people. My
mother used to wheel me out for air every day in a
thing called a perambulator, and whenever there
were soldiers to be seen she used to say, ‘Oh! Pritty
sojers!’

“ ‘Sojers’ must have been one of my earliest words.
I used to point my little wool-encased finger—for
they wrapped up children tremendously in those
days and I wore even gloves—and I would say:
‘Sosher.’

“Let me try and describe to you what sort of
home this was of mine and what manner of people
my father and mother were. Such homes and houses
and places have long since vanished from the world,
not many relics of them have been kept, and though
you have probably learnt most of the facts concern¬
ing them, I doubt if you can fully realise the feel
and the reality of the things I found about me. The

THE DREAM

17

name of the place was Cherry Gardens; it was about
two miles from the sea at Sandbourne, one way
lay the town of Cliffstone from which steamboats
crossed the sea to France, and the other way lay
Lowcliff and its rows and rows of ugly red brick
barracks and its great drilling-plain, and behind us
inland was a sort of plateau covered with raw new
roads of loose pebbles—you cannot imagine such
roads!—and vegetable gardens and houses new-built
or building, and then a line of hills, not very high
but steep and green and bare, the Downs. The
Downs made a graceful sky-line that bounded my
world to the north as the sapphire line of the sea
bounded it to the south, and they were almost the
only purely beautiful things in that world. All the
rest was touched and made painful by human con¬
fusion. When I was a very little boy I used to won¬
der what lay behind those Downs, but I never went
up them to see until I was seven or eight years old.”

“This was before the days of aeroplanes?” asked
Radiant.

“They came into the world when I was eleven
or twelve. I saw the first that ever crossed the
Channel between the mainland of Europe and Eng¬
land. That was considered a very wonderful thing
indeed. (“It was a wonderful thing,” said Sunray.)
I went with a lot of other boys, and we edged
through a crowd that stood and stared at the quaint
old machine; it was like a big canvas grasshopper
with outspread wings; in a field—somewhere beyond
Cliffstone. It was being guarded, and the people
were kept away from it by stakes and a string.

“I find it hard to describe to you what sort of

18

THE DREAM

places Cherry Gardens and Cliffstone were like—
even though we have just visited the ruins of Do-
modossola. Domodossola was a sprawling, aimless
town enough, but these sprawled far more and
looked with a far emptier aimlessness into the face
of God. You see in the thirty or forty years before
my birth there had been a period of comparative
prosperity and productivity in human affairs. It
was not of course in those days the result of any
statesmanship or forethought; it just happened,—
as now and then in the course of a rain-torrent there
comes a pool of level water between the rapids. But
the money and credit system was working fairly
well; there was much trade and intercourse, no
extensive pestilences, exceptionally helpful seasons,
and few very widespread wars. As a result of this
conspiracy of favourable conditions there was a per¬
ceptible rise in the standards of life of the common
people, but for the most part it was discounted by
a huge increase of population. As our school books
say, Tn those days Man was his own Locust/ Later
in my life I was to hear furtive whispers of a for¬
bidden topic called Birth Control, but in the days
of my childhood the whole population of the world,
with very few exceptions, was in a state of complete
and carefully protected ignorance about the ele¬
mentary facts of human life and happiness. The
surroundings of my childhood were dominated by an
unforeseen and uncontrollable proliferation. Cheap
proliferation was my scenery, my drama, my atmos¬
phere.”

“But they had teachers and priests and doctors
and rulers to tell them better,” said Willow.

THE DREAM

19

“Not to tell them better,” said Sarnac. “These
guides and pilots of life were wonderful people.
They abounded, and guided no one. So far from
teaching men and women to control births or avoid
diseases or work generously together, they rather
prevented such teaching. This place called Cherry
Gardens had mostly come into existence in the fifty
years before my birth. It had grown from a minute
hamlet into what we used to call an 'urban district.’
In that old world in which there was neither freedom
nor direction, the land was divided up into patches
of all sorts and sizes and owned by people who did
what they liked with it, subject to a few vexatious
and unhelpful restrictions. And in Cherry Gardens,
a sort of men called speculative builders bought
pieces of land, often quite unsuitable land, and built
houses for the swarming increase of population that
had otherwise nowhere to go. There was no plan
about this building. One speculative builder built
here and another there, and each built as cheaply
as possible and sold or let what he had built for as
much as possible. Some of the houses they built
in rows and some stood detached each with a little
patch of private garden—garden they called it,
though it was either a muddle or a waste—fenced
in to keep people out.”

“Why did they keep people out?”

“They liked to keep people out. It was a satis¬
faction for them. They were not secret gardens.
People might look over the fence if they chose. And
each house had its own kitchen where food was
cooked—there was no public eating-place in Cherry
Gardens—and each, its separate store of household

20

THE DREAM

gear. In most houses there was a man who went
out to work and earn a living—they didn’t so much
live in those days as earn a living—and came home
to eat and sleep, and there was a woman, his wife,
who did all the services, food and cleaning and
everything, and also she bore children, a lot of un¬
premeditated children—because she didn’t know any
better. She was too busy to look after them well,
and many of them died. Most days she cooked a
dinner. She cooked it. . . . It was cooking!”

Sarnac paused—his brows knit. ‘‘Cooking! Well,
well. That’s over, anyhow,” he said.

Radiant laughed cheerfully.

“Almost everyone suffered from indigestion. The
newspapers were full of advertisements of cures,”
said Sarnac, still darkly retrospective.

“I’ve never thought of that aspect of life in the
old world,” said Sunray.

“It was—fundamental,” said Sarnac. “It was a
world, in every way, out of health.

“Every morning, except on the Sunday, after the
man had gone off to his day’s toil and the children
had been got up and dressed and those who were
old enough sent off to school, the woman of the
house tidied up a bit and then came the question
of getting in food. For this private cooking of hers.
Every day except Sunday a number of men with
little pony carts or with barrows they pushed in
front of them, bearing meat and fish and vegetables
and fruit, all of it exposed to the weather and any
dirt that might be blowing about, came bawling
along the roads of Cherry Gardens, shouting the
sort of food they were selling. My memory goes

THE DREAM

21

back to that red and black sofa by the front window
and I am a child once again. There was a particu¬
larly splendid fish hawker. What a voice he had!
I used to try to reproduce his splendid noises in my
piping childish cries: ‘Mackroo-E-y’are Macroo!
Fine Macroo! Thee a Sheen. Macroo/’

"The housewives would come out from their do¬
mestic mysteries to buy or haggle and, as the saying
went, ‘pass the time of day’ with their neighbours.
But everything they wanted was not to be got from
the hawkers, and that was where my father came in.
He kept a little shop. He was what was called a
greengrocer; he sold fruits and vegetables, such poor
fruits and vegetables as men had then learnt to
grow—and also he sold coals and paraffin (which
people burnt in their lamps) and chocolate and
ginger-beer and other things that were necessary
to the barbaric housekeeping of the time. He also
sold cut-flowers and flowers in pots, and seeds and
sticks and string and weed-killer for the little gar¬
dens. His shop stood in a row with a lot of other
shops; the row was like a row of the ordinary houses
with the lower rooms taken out and replaced by the
shop, and he ‘made his living’ and ours by buying
his goods as cheaply as he could and getting as much
as he could for them. It was a very poor living
because there were several other able-bodied men in
Cherry Gardens who were also greengrocers, and if
he took too much profit then his customers would
go away and buy from these competitors and he
would get no profit at all.

“I and my brother and sisters—for my mother
had been unable to avoid having six babies and four

22

THE DREAM

of us were alive—lived by and in and round about
this shop. In the summer we were chiefly out of
doors or in the room above the shop; but in the
cold weather it cost too much trouble and money to
have a fire in that room—all Cherry Gardens was
heated by open coal fires—and we went down into
a dark underground kitchen where my mother, poor
dear! cooked according to her lights.”

“You were troglodytes!” said Willow.

“Practically. We always ate in that downstairs
room. In the summer we were sunburnt and ruddy,
but in the winter, because of this—inhumation, we
became white and rather thin. I had an elder
brother who was monstrous in my childish memory;
he was twelve years older than I; and I had two
sisters, Fanny and Prudence. My elder brother
Ernest went out to work, and then he went away
to London and I saw very little of him until I too
went to London. I was the youngest of the lot;
and when I was nine years old, my father, taking
courage, turned my mother’s perambulator into a
little push-cart for delivering sacks of coals and
suchlike goods.

“Fanny, my elder sister, was a very pretty girl,
with a white face from which her brown hair went
back in graceful, natural waves and curls, and she
had very dark blue eyes. Prudence was also white
but of a duller whiteness, and her eyes were grey.
She would tease me and interfere with me, but
Fanny was either negligent or gracefully kind to me
and I adored her. I do not, strangely enough, re¬
member my mother’s appearance at all distinctly,
though she was, of course, the dominant fact of my

THE DREAM

23

childish life. She was too familiar, I suppose, for
the sort of attention that leaves a picture on the
mind.

“I learnt to speak from my family and chiefly
from my mother. None of us spoke well; our com¬
mon idioms were poor and bad, we mispronounced
many words, and long words we avoided as some¬
thing dangerous and pretentious. I had very few
toys: a tin railway-engine I remember, some metal
soldiers, and an insufficient supply of wooden build¬
ing-bricks. There was no special place for me to
play, and if I laid out my toys on the living-room
table, a meal was sure to descend and sweep them
away. I remember a great longing to play with the
things in the shop, and especially with the bundles
of firewood and some fire-kindlers that were most
seductively shaped like wdieels, but my father dis¬
couraged such ambitions. He did not like to have
me about the shop until I was old enough to help,
and the indoor part of most of my days was spent
in the room above it or in the underground room
below it. After the shop was closed it became a
very cold, cavernous, dark place to a little boy’s
imagination; there were dreadful shadows in which
terrible things might lurk, and even holding fast to
my mother’s hand on my way to bed, I was filled
with fear to traverse it. It had always a faint, un¬
pleasant smell, a smell of decaying vegetation vary¬
ing with the particular fruit or vegetable that was
most affected, and a constant element of paraffin.
But on Sundays when it was closed all day the shop
was different, no longer darkly threatening but very,
very still. I would be taken through it on my way

24

THE DREAM

to church or Sunday school. (Yes—I will tell you
about church and Sunday school in a minute.)
When I saw my mother lying dead—she died when
I was close upon sixteen—I was instantly reminded
of the Sunday shop. . . .

“Such, my dear Sunray, was the home in which I
found myself. I seemed to have been there since
my beginning. It was the deepest dream I have
ever had. I had forgotten even you.”

•

§ 2

“And how was this casually begotten infant pre¬
pared for the business of life?” asked Radiant.
“Was he sent aw r ay to a Garden?”

“There were no Children’s Gardens such as we
know them, in that world,” said Sarnac. “There was
a place of assembly called an elementary school.
Thither I was taken, twice daily, by my sister Pru¬
dence, after I was six years old.

“And here again I find it hard to convey to you
what the reality was like. Our histories tell you of
the beginning of general education in that distant
time and of the bitter jealousy felt by the old priest¬
hoods and privileged people for the new sort of
teachers, but they give you no real picture of the
ill-equipped and understaffed schoolhouses and of
the gallant work of the underpaid and ill-trained
men and women who did the first rough popular
teaching. There was in particular a gaunt dark
man with a cough who took the older boys, and a
little freckled woman of thirty or so who fought
with the lower children, and, I see now, they were
holy saints. His name I forget, but the little woman

THE DREAM

25

was called Miss Merrick. They had to handle enor¬
mous classes, and they did most of their teaching
by voice and gesture and chalk upon a blackboard.
Their equipment was miserable. The only materials
of which there was enough to go round were a stock
of dirty reading-books, Bibles, hymn-books, and a
lot of slabs of slate in frames on which we wrote
with slate pencils to economise paper. Drawing
materials we had practically none ; most of us never
learnt to draw. Yes. Lots of sane adults in that
old world never learnt to draw even a box. There
was nothing to count with in that school and no
geometrical models. There were hardly any pictures
except a shiny one of Queen Victoria and a sheet
of animals, and there were very yellow wall-maps of
Europe and Asia twenty years out of date. We
learnt the elements of mathematics by recitation.
We used to stand in rows, chanting a wonderful
chant called our Tables:—

“ 'Twn-swun two.

Twi -stewer four.

Twi- sfree’r six.

Twft-sfour’ rate.’

“We used to sing—in unison—religious hymns
for the most part. The school had a second-hand
piano to guide our howlings. There had been a
great fuss in Cliffstone and Cherry Gardens when
this piano was bought. They called it a luxury,
and pampering the working classes.”

“Pampering the working classes!” Firefly re¬
peated. “I suppose it’s all right. But I’m rather
at sea.”

26

THE DREAM

“I can’t explain everything,” said Sarnac. “The
fact remains that England grudged its own children
the shabbiest education, and so for the matter of
fact did every other country. They saw things
differently in those days. They were still in the
competitive cave. America, which was a much
richer country than England, as wealth went then,
had if possible meaner and shabbier schools for her
common people. . . . My dear! it was so. I’m
telling you a story, not explaining the universe. . . .
And naturally, in spite of the strenuous efforts of
such valiant souls as Miss Merrick, we children
learnt little and we learnt it very badly. Most of
my memories of school are memories of boredom.
We sat on wooden forms at long, worn, wooden
desks, rows and rows of us—I can see again all the
little heads in front of me—and far away was Miss
Merrick with a pointer trying to interest us in the
Rivers of England:—

“Ty. Wear. Teasumber.”

“Is that what they used to call swearing?” asked
Willow.

“No. Only Jogriphy. And History was:—

“Wi-yum the Conqueror. Tessisstysiss.

Wi-yum Ruefiss. Ten eighty-seven.”

“What did it mean?”

“To us children? Very much what it means
to you—gibberish. The hours, those interminable
hours of childhood in school! How they dragged!
Did I say I lived a life in my dream? In school
I lived eternities. Naturally we sought such amuse-

THE DREAM

27

ment as was possible. One thing was to give your
next-door neighbour a pinch or a punch and say,
‘Pass it on.’ And we played furtive games with,
marbles. It is rather amusing to recall that I learnt
to count, to add and subtract and so forth, by play¬
ing marbles in despite of discipline.”

“But was that the best your Miss Merrick and
your saint with the cough could do?” asked Radiant.

“Oh! they couldn’t help themselves. They were
in a machine, and there were periodic Inspectors and
examinations to see that they kept in it.”

“But,” said Sunray, “that Incantation about
‘Wi-yum the Conqueror’ and the rest of it. It
meant something? At the back of it, lost to sight
perhaps, there was some rational or semi-rational
idea?”

“Perhaps,” reflected Sarnac. “But I never de¬
tected it.”

“They called it history,” said Firefly helpfully.

“They did,” Sarnac admitted. “Yes, I think they
were trying to interest the children of the land in
the doings of the Kings and Queens of England,
probably as dull a string of monarchs as the world
has ever seen. If they rose to interest at times it
was through a certain violence; there was one de¬
lightful Henry VIII with such a craving for love
and such a tender conscience about the sanctity of
marriage that he always murdered one wife before
he took another. And there was one Alfred who
burnt some cakes—I never knew why. In some way
it embarrassed the Danes, his enemies.”

“But was that all the history they taught you?”
cried Sunray.

28

THE DREAM

"Queen Elizabeth of England wore a ruff and
James the First of England and Scotland kissed his
men favourites.”

“But history!”

Sarnac laughed. “It is odd. I see that—now
that I am awake again. But indeed that was all
they taught us.”

“Did they tell you nothing of the beginnings of
life and the ends of life, of its endless delights and
possibilities?”

Sarnac shook his head.

“Not at school,” said Starlight, who evidently
knew her books; “they did that at church. Sarnac
forgets the churches. It was, you must remember,
an age of intense religious activity. There were
places of worship everywhere. One whole day in
every seven was given up to the Destinies of Man
and the study of God’s Purpose. The worker ceased
from his toil. From end to end of the land the air
was full of the sound of church bells and of con¬
gregations singing. Wasn’t there a certain beauty
in that, Sarnac?”

Sarnac reflected and smiled. “It wasn’t quite like
that,” he said. “Our histories, in that matter, need
a little revision.”

“But one sees the churches and chapels in the old
photographs and cinema pictures. And we still have
many of their cathedrals. And some of those are
quite beautiful.”

“And they have all had to be shored up and under¬
pinned and tied together with steel,” said Sunray,
“because they were either so carelessly or so faith-

THE DREAM 29

lessly built. And anyhow, these were not built in
Sarnac’s time.”

“Mortimer Smith’s time,” Sarnac corrected.
“They were built hundreds of years earlier than
that.”

§ 3

“You must not judge the religion of an age by
its temples and churches,” said Sarnac. “An un¬
healthy body may have many things in it that it
cannot clear away, and the weaker it is the less it
can prevent abnormal and unserviceable growths.
. . . Which sometimes may be in themselves quite
bright and beautiful growths.

“But let me describe to you the religious life of
my home and upbringing. There was a sort of State
Church in England, but it had lost most of its offi¬
cial standing in regard to the community as a whole;
it had two buildings in Cherry Gardens—one an old
one dating from the hamlet days with a square
tower and rather small as churches went, and the
other new and spacious with a spire. In addition
there were the chapels of two other Christian com¬
munities, the Congregationalists and the Primitive
Methodists, and also one belonging to the old
Roman Catholic communion. Each professed to
present the only true form of Christianity and each
maintained a minister, except the larger Church of
England place, which had two, the vicar and the
curate. You might suppose that, like the museums
of history and the Temples of Vision we set before
our young people, these places would display in the
most moving and beautiful forms possible the his-

30

THE DREAM

tory of our race and the great adventure of life in
which we are all engaged, they would remind us of
our brotherhood and lift us out of selfish thoughts.
. . . But let me tell you how I saw it:—

“I don’t remember my first religious instruction.
Very early I must have learnt to say a rhymed
prayer to—

“ ‘Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look on me, a little child.’

And also another prayer about ‘Trespassing’ which
I thought referred to going into fields or woods
where there was no public footpath, and which
began with the entirely incomprehensible words,
“Our Father Charting Heaven, Haloed B thy Name.’
Also one asked for one’s ‘daily bread’ and that God’s
Kingdom should come. I learnt these two prayers
from my mother at an incredibly early age, and said
them every night and sometimes in the morning.
She held these words in far too great reverence to
explain them, and when I wanted to ask for my
‘daily bread and butter,’ she scolded me bitterly.
I also wanted to ask what would happen to good
Queen Victoria w T hen God’s Kingdom came, but I
never mustered courage to ask my mother that. I
had a curious idea that there could be a marriage
but that nobody had thought of that solution. This
must have been very early in my life, because Vic¬
toria the Good died when I was five, during the
course of a long, far-away, and now almost-forgotten
struggle called the Boer War.

“These infantile perplexities deepened and then
gave w T ay to a kind of self-protective apathy when

THE DREAM 31

I was old enough to go to church and Sunday
school.

“Sunday morning was by far the most strenuous
part of all the week for my mother. We had all
had a sort of bath overnight in the underground
kitchen, except my father and mother, who I don’t
think ever washed all over—I don’t know for certain
—and on Sunday morning we rose rather later than
usual and put on our ‘clean things’ and our best
clothes. (Everybody in those days wore a frightful
lot of clothes. You see, they were all so unhealthy
they could not stand the least exposure to wet or
cold.) Breakfast was a hurried and undistinguished
meal on the way to greater things. Then we had
to sit about, keeping out of harm’s way, avoiding
all crumpling or dirt, and pretending to be interested
in one of the ten or twelve books our home possessed,
until church time. Mother prepared the Sunday
meal, almost always a joint of meat in a baking-dish
which my elder sister took in to the baker’s next
door but one to be cooked while we worshipped.
Father rose later than anyone and appeared strangely
transformed in a collar, dickey and cuffs and a black
coat and his hair smoothed down and parted. Usu¬
ally some unforeseen delay arose; one of my sisters
had a hole in her stocking, or my boots wouldn’t
button and nobody could find the buttonhook, or a
prayer-book was mislaid. This engendered an at¬
mosphere of flurry. There were anxious moments
when the church bell ceased to ring and began a
monotonous ‘tolling-in.’

“‘Oh! we shall be late again!’ said my mother.
‘We shall be late again.’

32

THE DREAM

“ ‘I’ll go on with Prue!’ my father would say.

“ ‘Me too!’ said Fanny.

“ ‘Not till you’ve found that button’ook, Miss
Huzzy/ my mother would cry. ‘For well I know
you’ve ’ad it.’

“Fanny would shrug her shoulders.

“ ‘Why ’e carn’t ’ave lace-up shoes to ’is feet like
any other kid, I carn’t understand,’ my father would
remark unhelpfully.

“My mother, ashen white with flurry, would wince
and say, ‘Lace-up shoes at ’is age! Let alone that
’e’d break the laces.’

“ ‘What’s that on the chiffoneer?’ Fanny would
ask abruptly.

“‘Ah! Naturally you know/

“ ‘Naturally I use my eyes.’

“‘Tcha! Got your answer ready! Oh, you
wicked girl! ’ ”

“Fanny would shrug her shoulders again and stare
out of the window. There was more trouble afoot
than a mislaid buttonhook between her and my
mother. Overnight ‘Miss Huzzy’ had been abroad
long after twilight, a terrible thing from a mother’s
point of view, as I will make plain to you later.

“My mother, breathing hard, would button my
boots in a punitive manner and then off we would
go, Prue hanging on to father ahead, Fanny a little
apart and scornful, and I trying to w T riggle my little
white-cotton-gloved hand out of my mother’s earnest
grip.

“We had what was called a ‘sitting’ at church, a
long seat with some hassocks and a kind of little
praying-ledge at the back of the seat in front. We

THE DREAM

33

filed into our sitting and knelt and rose up, and
were ready for the function known as morning
service.”

§ 4

“And this service again was a strange thing. We
read about these churches and their services in our
histories and we simplify and idealise the picture;
we take everything in the account, as we used to
say in that old world, at its face value. We think
that the people understood and believed completely
the curious creeds of those old-world religions; that
they worshipped with a simple ardour; that they
had in their hearts a secret system of comforts and
illusions which some of us even now try to recover.
But life is always more complicated than any ac¬
count or representation of it can be. The human
mind in those days was always complicating and
overlaying its ideas, forgetting primary in secondary
considerations, substituting repetition and habit for
purposive acts, and forgetting and losing its initial
intentions. Life has grown simpler for men as the
ages have passed because it has grown clearer. We
were more complicated in our lives then because
we were more confused. And so we sat in our pews
on Sunday, in a state of conforming inattention,
not really thinking out what we were doing, feeling
rather than knowing significances and with our
thoughts wandering like water from a leaky vessel.
We watched the people about us furtively and mi¬
nutely and we were acutely aware that they watched
us. We stood up, we half knelt, we sat, as the ritual
of the service required us to do. I can still recall
quite vividly the long complex rustle of the con-

34 THE DREAM

gregation as it sat down or rose up in straggling
unison.

“This morning service was a mixture of prayers
and recitations by the priests—vicar and curate we
called them—and responses by the congregation,
chants, rhymed hymns, the reading of passages from
the Hebrew-Christian Bible, and at last a discourse.
Except for this discourse all the service followed a
prescribed course set out in a prayer-book. We
hopped from one page of the prayer-book to another,
and 'finding your place’ was a terrible mental exer¬
cise for a small boy with a sedulous mother on one
side and Prue on the other.

“The service began lugubriously and generally
it was lugubrious. We were all miserable sinners,
there was no health in us; w T e expressed our mild
surprise that our Deity did not resort to violent
measures against us. There was a long part called
the Litany in which the priest repeated with con¬
siderable gusto every possible human misfortune,
war, pestilence, famine, and so on, and the congre¬
gation interjected at intervals, 'Good Lord deliver
us!’ although you might have thought that these
were things within the purview of our international
and health and food administrators rather than
matters for the Supreme Being. Then the officiating
priest went on to a series of prayers for the Queen,
the rulers of the State, heretics, unfortunate people,
travellers, and the harvest, all of which I concluded
were being dangerously neglected by Divine Provi¬
dence, and the congregation reinforced the priest’s
efforts by salvos of ‘We beseech Thee to hear us,
Good Lord.’ The hymns were of very variable

THE DREAM

35

quality, but the greater part were effusive praises
of our Maker, with frequent false rhymes and bad
quantities. We thanked Heaven for our ‘blessings/
and that without a thought of irony. Yet you would
imagine that a Deity of Infinite Power might easily
have excused our gratitude for the precarious little
coal and greengrocery business in Cherry Gardens
and all my mother’s toil and anxieties and my
father’s worries.

“The general effect of this service beneath its
surface adulation of the worshipped God, was to
blame Him thoroughly and completely for every
human misfortune and to deny the responsibility
of mankind for its current muddle and wretchedness.
Throughout the land and throughout most of the
world, Sunday after Sunday, by chant and hymn
and prayer and gesture, it was being dinned into
the minds of young people, whenever for a moment
the service broke through the surface of their pro¬
tective instinctive inattention, that mankind w T as
worthless and hopeless, the helpless plaything of a
moody, impulsive, vain, and irresistible Being. This
rain of suggestion came between their minds and
the Sun of Life; it hid the Wonderful from them;
it robbed them of access to the Spirit of Courage.
But so alien was this doctrine of abasement from
the heart of man, that for the most part the con¬
gregation sat or stood or knelt in rows in its pews
repeating responses and singing mechanically, with
its minds distracted to a thousand distant more
congenial things, watching the deportment of its
neighbours, scheming about business or pleasure,
w r andering in reverie.

36

THE DREAM

“There would come at times into this service,
sometimes but not always, parts of another service,
the Communion Service. This was the reduced re¬
mainder of that Catholic Mass of which we have all
learnt in our histories. As you know, the world of
Christianity was still struggling, nineteen hundred
years after Christianity had begun, to get rid of the
obsession of a mystical blood sacrifice, to forget a
traditional killing of a God-man, that was as old as
agriculture and the first beginnings of human settle¬
ment. The English State Church was so much a
thing of compromise and tradition that in the two
churches it had in Cherry Gardens the teaching upon
this issue was diametrically opposed; one, the new
and showy one, St. Jude’s, was devoted to an exag¬
geration of the importance of the Communion, called
it the Mass, called the table on which it was cele¬
brated the Altar, called the Rev. Mr. Snapes the
Priest, and generally emphasised the ancient pagan
interpretation, while the other, the little old church
of St. Osyth, called its priest a Minister, its altar
the Lord’s Table, and the Communion the Lord’s
Supper, denied all its mystical importance, and made
it merely a memorial of the life and death of the
Master. These age-long controversies between the
immemorial temple worship of our race and the new
life of intellectual and spiritual freedom that had
then been dawning in the world for three or four
centuries were far above my poor little head as I
fretted and 'behaved myself’ in our sitting. To my
youthful mind the Communion Service meant noth¬
ing more than a long addition to the normal tediums
of worship. In those days I had a pathetic belief

THE DREAM

37

in the magic of prayer, and oblivious of the unflat¬
tering implications of my request I would whisper
throughout the opening prayers and recitations of
the morning: Tray God there won’t be a Com¬
munion Service. Pray God there won’t be a Com¬
munion Service.’

“Then would come the sermon, the original com¬
position of the Rev. Mr. Snapes, and the only thing
in the whole service that was not set and prescribed
and that had not been repeated a thousand times
before.

“Mr. Snapes was a youngish pinkish man with
pinkish golden hair and a clean-shaven face; he had
small chubby features like a cluster of champignons,
an expression of beatific self-satisfaction, and a
plump voice. He had a way of throwing back the
ample white sleeve of his surplice when he turned
the pages of his manuscript, a sort of upthrow of
the posed white hand, that aroused in me one of
the inexplicable detestations of childhood. I used
to hate this gesture, watch for its coming and squirm
when it came.

“The sermons were so much above my head that
I cannot now tell what any of them were about.
He would talk of things like the 'Comfort of the
Blessed Eucharist’ and the ‘Tradition of the Fathers
of the Church.’ He would discourse too of what
he called the Feasts of the Church, though a collec¬
tion plate was the nearest approach to feasting we
saw. He made much of Advent and Epiphany and
Whitsuntide, and he had a common form of transi¬
tion to modern considerations, ‘And we too, dear
Brethren, in these latter days have our Advents

38

THE DREAM

and our Epiphanies.’ Then he would pass to King
Edward’s proposed visit to Lowcliffe or to the recent
dispute about the Bishop of Natal or the Bishop
of Zanzibar. You cannot imagine how remote it
was from anything of moment in our normal lives.

“And then suddenly, when a small boy was losing
all hope of this smooth voice ever ceasing, came a
little pause and then the blessed words of release:
‘And now to God the Father, God the Son-’

“It was over! There was a stir throughout the
church. We roused ourselves, we stood up. Then
we knelt for a brief moment of apparent prayer
and then we scrabbled for hats, coats, and umbrel¬
las, and so out into the open air, a great pattering
of feet upon the pavement, dispersing this way and
that, stiff greetings of acquaintances, Prue to the
baker’s for the Sunday dinner and the rest of us
straight home.

“Usually there were delightful brown potatoes
under the Sunday joint and perhaps there would
be a fruit pie also. But in the spring came rhubarb,
which I hated. It was held to be peculiarly good
for me, and I was always compelled to eat excep¬
tionally large helpings of rhubarb tart.

“In the afternoon there was Sunday school or else
‘Children’s Service,’ and, relieved of the presence
of our parents, we three children went to the school-
house or to the church again to receive instruction
in the peculiarities of our faith. In the Sunday
school untrained and unqualified people whom we
knew in the week-days as shop assistants and an
auctioneer’s clerk and an old hairy deaf gentleman
named Spendilow, collected us in classes and dis-

THE DREAM

39

coursed to us on the ambiguous lives and doings
of King David of Israel and of Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob and the misbehaviour of Queen Jezebel
and the like topics. And we sang easy hymns in
unison. At times our teachers spoke of the Master
of Mankind, but they spoke without understanding ;
they spoke of him as a sort of trickster who worked
miracles and achieved jail delivery from the tomb.
And so had ‘saved’ us—in spite of the manifest fact
that we were anything but saved. The teaching of
the Master was, you know, buried under these tales
of Resurrection and Miracles for two thousand years.
He was a light shining in the darkness and the dark¬
ness knew it not. And of the great past of life, of
the races of men and their slow growth in knowledge,
of fears and dark superstitions and the dawning vic¬
tories of truth, of the conquest and sublimation of
human passions through the ages, of the divinity
of research and discovery, of the latent splendour
of our bodies and senses, and the present dangers
and possibilities amidst which the continually more
crowded masses of our race were then blundering
so tragically and yet with such bright gleams of hope
and promise, we heard no talk at all. We were given
no intimation that there was so much as a human
community with a common soul and an ultimate
common destiny. It would have been scandalous
and terrifying to those Sunday-school teachers to
have heard any such things spoken about in Sunday
school.

“And mind you,” said Sarnac, “there was no bet¬
ter preparation for life in all the world then than
the sort of thing I was getting. The older church

40

THE DREAM

of St. Osyth was in the hands of the Rev. Thomas
Benderton, who dispersed a dwindling congregation
by bellowing sermons full of the threat of hell. He
had scared my mother to the church of St. Jude by
his frequent mention of the devil, and the chief topic
of his discourse was the sin of idolatry; he treated it
always with especial reference to the robes adopted
by Mr. Snapes when he celebrated Holy Communion
and to something obscure that he did with small
quantities of bread and wine upon his Communion
table.

“Of what the Congregationalists and the Primitive
Methodists did and taught in their places of resort,
their chapels and Sunday schools, I do not know
very exactly, because my mother would have been
filled with a passion of religious terror if ever I had
gone near those assemblies. But I know that their
procedure was only a plainer version of our church
experiences with still less of the Mass and still more
of the devil. The Primitive Methodists, I know,
laid their chief stress upon the belief that the greater
portion of mankind, when once they had done with
the privations and miseries of this life, would be
tortured exquisitely for ever and ever in hell. I got
this very clearly because a Primitive Methodist
boy a little older than myself conveyed his anxieties
to me one day when we had gone for a walk into
Cliffstone.

“He was a bent sort of boy with a sniff and he
wore a long white woollen comforter; there hasn’t
been such a figure in the world now for hundreds
of years. We walked along the promenade that
followed the cliff edge, by the bandstand and by

THE DREAM

41

the people lounging in deck-chairs. There were
swarms of people in their queer holiday clothes, and
behind, rows of the pallid grey houses in which they
lodged. And my companion bore his testimony.
'Mr. Molesly ’e says that the Day of Judgment
might ■ come any minute—come in fire and glory
before ever we get to the end of these Leas. And
all them people’d be tried. . . .’

“ 'Jest as they are?’

" 'Jest as they are. That woman there with the
dog and that fat man asleep in ’is chair and—the
policeman.’

"He paused, a little astonished at the Hebraic
daring of his thoughts. 'The policeman,’ he re¬
peated. ‘They’d be weighed and found wanting,
and devils would come and torture them. Torture
that policeman. Burn him and cut him about. And
everybody. Horrible, horrible torture. . .

"I had never heard the doctrines of Christianity
applied with such particularity before. I was dis¬
mayed.

" 'I sh’d ’ide,’ I said.

" ' ’E ’d see you. ’E’d see you and tell the devils,’
said my little friend. ' ’E sees the wicked thoughts
in us now. . . .’ ”

"But did people really believe such stuff as that?”
cried Sunray.

"As far as they believed anything,” said Sarnac.
"I admit it was frightful, but so it was. Do you
realise what cramped, distorted minds grew up
under such teaching in our under-nourished, infected
bodies?”

42

THE DREAM

“Few people could have really believed so gro¬
tesque a fairy-tale as hell,” said Radiant.

“More people believed than you would think,”
said Sarnac. “Few people, of course, held it actively
for long—or they would have gone mad—but it
was in the background of a lot of minds. And the
others? The effect of this false story about the
world upon the majority of minds was a sort of
passive rejection. They did not deny, but they
refused to incorporate the idea with the rest of their
thoughts. A kind of dead place, a scar, was made
just where there ought to have been a sense of
human destiny, a vision of life beyond the imme¬
diate individual life . . .

“I find it hard to express the state of mind into
which one grew. The minds of the young had been
outraged by these teachings; they were no longer
capable of complete mental growth, a possibility
had been destroyed. Perhaps we never did really
take into ourselves and believe that grotesque fairy¬
tale, as you call it, about hell but, because of what
it had done to our minds, we grew up without a liv¬
ing faith and without a purpose. The nucleus of our
religious being was this suppressed fear of hell. Few
of us ever had it out fairly into the light of day. It
was considered to be bad taste to speak of any such
things, or indeed of any of the primaries of life,
either by way of belief or denial. You might allude
circuitously. Or joke. Most of the graver advances
in life were made under a mask of facetiousness.

“Mentally that world in the days of Mortimer
Smith was a world astray. It was astray like a lost
dog and with no idea of direction. It is true that

THE DREAM

43

the men of that time were very like the men of this
time—in their possibilities—but they were un¬
healthy in mind as well as body, they were adrift
and incoherent. Walking as we do in the light, and
by comparison simply and directly, their confusion,
the tortuous perplexity of their thoughts and con¬
duct, is almost inconceivable to us. There is no sort
of mental existence left in our world now, to which
it can be compared.”

§ 5

“I think I mentioned the line of hills, the Downs
that bounded the world of my upbringing to the
north. What lay beyond them was a matter for
wonder and speculation to me long before I was
able to clamber to their crests. In summer time
the sun set behind them to the north-west, often
in a glow of gold and splendour, and I remember
that among my fancies was a belief that the Day
of Judgment was over there and that Celestial City
to which Mr. Snapes would some day lead us—in
procession, of course, and with a banner.

“My first ascent of this childhood’s boundary
must have occurred when I was eight or nine. I
do not remember with whom I went or any other
particulars, but I have a very acute memory of my
disappointment at looking down a long, very gentle
slope and seeing nothing but fields and hedges and
groups of large sheep feeding. What I had expected
to find I cannot now remember. I seem to have
noted only the foreground then, and it must have
been after many such excursions that I began to
realise the variegated spaciousness of the country to

44

THE DREAM

the north. The view indeed went very far; on a
clear day we saw blue hills nearly twenty miles
away; there w T ere woodlands and parklands, brown
ridges of plough-land that became golden ridges of
corn in summer time, village churches amidst clus¬
tering greenery, and the gleaming of ponds and lakes.
Southward the horizon lifted as the Downs were
ascended and the breadth of the sea-belt increased.
It was my father who drew my attention to that,
on the first occasion of our crossing the Downs
together.

“ ‘Go as ’igh as you like, ’Any/ he said, ‘and the
sea goes up as ’igh. There it is, you see—level
with us and we ever so ’igh above Cherry Gardens.
And yet it don’t drown’d Cherry Gardens! And
why don’t it drown’d Cherry Gardens seeing that
it might? Tell me that, ’Any/

“I couldn’t.

“ ‘Providence,’ said my father triumphantly.
Providence does it. ’Olds back the sea, Thus Far.
And over there, see ’ow plain it is! is France.’

“I saw France and it was exceptionally plain.

“ ‘Sometimes you see France and sometimes you
don’t,’ said my father. ‘There’s a lesson in that too,
my boy, for those who care to take it.’

“It had always been the custom of my father to
go out after tea on Sundays, summer and winter
alike, and walk right over the Downs to Chessing
Hanger, six miles and more away. He went, I
knew, to see my Uncle John, Uncle John Julip,
my mother’s brother, who was gardener to Lord
Bramble of Chessing Hanger Park. But it was only
when he began to take me with him that I realised

THE DREAM

45

that these walks had any other motive than fraternal
(in law) affection and the natural desire of a pent-up
shopkeeper for exercise. But from the first journey
on I knew that the clue to these expeditions lay
in the burthens with which we returned to Cherry
Gardens. Always there was supper in the cosy little
gardener’s cottage, and always as we departed we
picked up an unobtrusive load of flowers, fruit or
vegetables, celery, peas, aubergines, mushrooms or
what-not, and returned through the dusk or moon¬
light or darkness or drizzle as the season and the
weather might determine to the little shop. And
sometimes my father would be silent or whistle
softly and sometimes he would improve our journey
with a discourse on the wonders of nature, the
beauty of goodness, and the beneficence of Provi¬
dence to man.

“He talked of the moon one moonlight night.
‘Look at it, ’Arry,’ he said—‘a dead world. Like
a skull it is, up there, stripped of its soul which is
its flesh so to speak and all its trees, which, if you
take me, were its ’air and its whiskers—stripped
and dead for ever and ever. Dry as a bone. And
everyone who lived there gone too. Dust and ashes
and gone.’

“ ‘Where they gone, farver?’ I would ask.

“ ‘Gorn to their judgment,’ he would explain with
gusto. ‘Kings and greengroshers, all the lot of ’em,
tried and made sheep and goats of, and gone to their
bliss or their sufferings, ’Arry. According to their
iniquities. Weighed and found wanting.’

“Long pause.

“ ‘It’s a pity,’ he said.

46

THE DREAM

“ ‘What is, farver?’

“ ‘Pity it’s over. It ’ud be something to look at,
them running about up there. Friendly-like it ’ud
bo. But that’s questioning the ways of Providence,
that is. I suppose we’d be always staring up and
falling over things. ... You never see a thing in
this world, ’Arry, that you think isn’t right but what
when you come to think it out it isn’t wiser than
you knew. Providence is as deep as E is I and you
can’t get be’ind ’im. And don’t go banging them
pears against your side, my boy; they’m Wi’yums,
and they won’t like it.’

“About the curious habits of animals and the
ways and migrations of birds my father would also
talk very freely.

“ ‘Me and you, ’Arry, we walk by the light of
reason. We ’ave reasonable minds given us to do
it with. But animals and birds and worms and
things, they live by Instink; they jus’ feel they
’ave to do this or that and they do it. It’s Instink
keeps the whale in the sea and the bird in the air;
but we go where our legs carry us as reason ’as
directed. You can’t ask an animal Why did you
do this? or Why did you do that?—you just ’it it;
but a man you ask and ’e ’as to answer, being a
reasonable creature. That’s why we ’as jails and
punishment and are answerable for our sins, ’Arry.
Every sin we ’as to answer for, great or small. But
an animal don’t ’ave to answer. It’s innocent. You
’it it or else you leave it be. . . .’

“My father thought for a time. ‘Except for dogs
and some old cats.’ he said. He mused among his

THE DREAM 47

memories for a time. ‘I’ve known some sinful cats,
’Arry,’ he said.

“He would enlarge on the wonders of instinct.

“He would explain how swallows and starlings and
storks and such-like birds were driven by instinct
thousands of miles, getting drowned on the way and
dashed to pieces against lighthouses. ‘Else they’d
freeze and starve where they was, ’Arry,’ said my
father. And every bird knew by instinct what sort
of nest it had to build, no one ever showing it or
telling it. Kangaroos carried their young in pouches
by instinct, but man being a reasonable creature
made perambulators. Chickens ran about by in¬
stinct directly they were born; not like human
children, who had to be carried and taken care of
until reason came. And jolly lucky that was for
the chicken, ‘For ’ow a ’en w r ould carry them,’ said
my father, ‘I carn’t imagine.’

“I remember that I put my father into a difficulty
by asking him why Providence had not given birds
an instinct against beating themselves against light¬
houses and moths against the gas-jet and the candle-
flame. For in the room over the shop on a summer’s
night it was quite unpleasant to read a book because
of the disabled flies and moths that fell scorched
upon its pages. ‘It’s to teach ’em some lesson,’ said
my father at last. ‘But what it’s to teach them,
’Arry, I don’t rightly know.’

“And sometimes he would talk, with illustrative
stories, of ill-gotten gold never staying with the
getter, and sometimes he w T ould talk of murders—
for there were still many murders in the world—and
how they always came out, ‘hide them as you may.’

48

THE DREAM

And always he was ready to point out the goodness
and wisdom, the cleverness, forethought, ingenuity,
and kindliness of Providence in the most earnest and
flattering manner.

“With such high discourse did we enliven our
long trudges between Cherry Gardens and Chessing
Hanger, and my father’s tone was always so exalted
that with a real shock I presently came to realise
that every Sunday evening we were in plain English
stealing and receiving stolen produce from Lord
Bramble’s gardens. Indeed, I cannot imagine how
we should have got along without that weekly raid.
Our little home at Cherry Gardens was largely sup¬
ported by my father’s share in the profits of these
transactions. When the produce was too good and
costly for Cherry Gardens’ needs, he would take it
down to Cliffstone and sell it to a friend there who
had a fashionable trade.”

Sarnac paused.

“Go on,” said Radiant. “You are making us
believe in your story. It sounds more and more
as if you had been there. It is so circumstantial.
Who was this Lord Bramble? I have always been
curious about Lords.”

§ 6

“Let me tell my story in my own way,” said Sar¬
nac. “If I answer questions I shall get lost. You
are all ready to ask a hundred questions already
about things I have mentioned and points familiar
to me but incomprehensible to you because our
world has forgotten them, and if I weaken towards
you you will trail me away and away further and

THE DREAM

49

further from my father and my Uncle Julip. We
shall just talk about manners and customs and about
philosophy and history. I want to tell my story.”

“Go on with your story,” said Sunray.

“This. Uncle John Julip of mine, although he was
my mother’s brother, was a cynical, opinionated
man. He was very short and fatter than was usual
among gardeners. He had a smooth white face and
a wise, self-satisfied smile. To begin with, I saw
him only on Sundays and in white shirt sleeves and
a large straw hat. He made disparaging remarks
about my physique and about the air of Cherry
Gardens every time he saw me. His wife had been
a dissenter of some sort and had become a church-
woman under protest. She too was white-faced and
her health was bad. She complained of pains. But
my Uncle John Julip disparaged her pains because
he said they were not in a reasonable place. There
was stomachache and backache and heartburn and
the wind, but her pains were neither here nor there;
they were therefore pains of the imagination and
had no claim upon our sympathy.

“When I was nearly thirteen years old my father
and uncle began planning for me to go over to the
dressing Hanger gardens and be an under-gardener.
This was a project I disliked very greatly; not only
did I find my uncle unattractive, but I thought
weeding and digging and most of the exercises of
a garden extremely tiring and boring. I had taken
very kindly to reading, I liked languages, I inherited
something of my father’s loquaciousness, and I had
won a special prize for an essay in my school. This
had fired the most unreasonable ambitions in me—

50

THE DREAM

to write, to write in newspapers, possibly even to
write books. At Cliffstone was what was called a
public library to which the householders of Cliff-
stone had access and from which members of their
families could borrow books—during holidays I
would be changing my book almost every day—but
at Chessing Hanger there were no books at all. My
sister Fanny encouraged me in my reading; she too
was a voracious reader of novels, and she shared my
dislike of the idea that I should become a gardener.

“In those days, you must understand, no attempt
was made to gauge the natural capacity of a child.
Human beings were expected to be grateful for any
opportunity of ‘getting a living.’ Parents bundled
their children into any employment that came
handy, and so most people followed occupations
that were misfits, that did not give full scope for
such natural gifts as they possessed and which com¬
monly cramped or crippled them. This in itself
diffused a vague discontent throughout the com¬
munity, and inflicted upon the great majority of
people strains and restraints and suppressions that
ate away their possibility of positive happiness.
Most youngsters as they grew up, girls as well as
boys, experienced a sudden tragic curtailment of
freedom and discovered themselves forced into some
unchosen specific drudgery from which it was very
difficult to escape. One summer holiday came,
when, instead of enjoying delightful long days of
play and book-devouring in Cliffstone, as I had
hitherto done, I was sent off over the hills to stay
with Uncle John Julip, and ‘see how I got on’ with
him. I still remember the burning disgust, the sense

THE DREAM 51

of immolation, with which I lugged my little valise
up the hills and over the Downs to the gardens.

“This Lord Bramble, Radiant, was one of the
landlords who were so important during the reigns
of the Hanoverian Kings up to the time of Queen
Victoria the Good. They owned large areas of
England as private property; they could do what
they liked with it. In the days of Victoria the Good
and her immediate predecessors these landlords who
had ruled the Empire through the House of Lords
made a losing fight for predominance against the
new industrialists, men who employed great masses
of people for their private gain in the iron and steel
industries, cotton and wool, beer and shipping, and
these again gave way to a rather different type who
developed advertisement and a political and finan¬
cial use of newspapers and new methods of finance.
The old land-holding families had to adapt them¬
selves to the new powers or be pushed aside. Lord
Bramble was one of those pushed aside, an indig¬
nant, old-fashioned, impoverished landowner. He
was in a slough of debts. His estates covered many
square miles; he owned farms and woodlands, a
great white uncomfortable house, far too roomy for
his shrunken means, and two square miles of park.
The park was greatly neglected, it was covered with
groups of old trees infested and rotten with fungus;
rabbits and moles abounded, and thistles and nettles.
There were no young trees there at all. The fences
and gates were badly patched; and here and there
ran degenerating roads. But boards threatening tres¬
passers abounded, and notices saying ‘NO THOR¬
OUGHFARE.’ For it was the dearest privilege of

52

THE DREAM

the British landlord to restrict the free movements
of ordinary people, and Lord Bramble guarded his
wilderness with devotion. Great areas of good land
in England in those days were in a similar state of
picturesquely secluded dilapidation.”

“Those were the lands where they did the shoot¬
ing,” said Radiant.

“How did you know?”

“I have seen a picture. They stood in a line along
the edge of a copse, with brown-leaved trees and a
faint smell of decay and a touch of autumnal damp¬
ness in the air, and they shot lead pellets at birds.”

“They did. And the beaters—I was pressed into
that service once or twice—drove the birds, the
pheasants, towards them. Shooting parties used to
come to Chessing Hanger, and the shooting used to
go on day after day. It was done with tremendous
solemnity.”

“But why?” asked Willow.

“Yes,” said Radiant. “Why did men do it?”

“I don’t know,” said Sarnac. “All I know is that
at certain seasons of the year the great majority
of the gentlemen of England who were supposed to
be the leaders and intelligence of the land, who were
understood to guide its destinies and control its
future, went out into the woods or on the moors
to massacre birds of various sorts with guns, birds
bred specially at great expense for the purpose of
this slaughter. These noble sportsmen were mar¬
shalled by gamekeepers; they stood in rows, the
landscape was animated with the popping of their
guns. The highest in the land participated gravely
in this national function and popped with distinc-

THE DREAM

53

tion. The men of this class were in truth at just
that level above imbecility where the banging of a
gun and the thrill of seeing a bird swirl and drop
is inexhaustibly amusing. They never tired of it.
The bang of the gun seems to have been essential
to the sublimity of the sensations of these sportsmen.
It wasn’t mere killing, because in that case these
people could also have assisted in killing the sheep
and oxen and pigs required by the butchers, but
this sport they left to men of an inferior social class.
Shooting birds on the wing was the essential idea.
When Lord Bramble was not killing pheasants or
grouse he shot in the south of France at perplexed
pigeons with clipped wings just let out of traps. Or
he hunted—not real animal hunting, not a fair fight
with bear or tiger or elephant in a jungle, but the
chasing of foxes—small stinking red animals about
the size of water-spaniels, which were sedulously
kept from extinction for this purpose of hunting;
they were hunted across cultivated land, and the
hunters rode behind a pack of dogs. Lord Bramble
dressed himself up with extreme care in a red jacket
and breeches of pigskin to do this. For the rest of
his time the good man played a card game called
bridge, so limited and mechanical that anyone now¬
adays would be able to read out the results and exact
probabilities of every deal directly he saw his cards.
There were four sets of thirteen cards each. But
Lord Bramble, who had never learnt properly to
count up to thirteen, found it full of dramatic sur¬
prises and wonderful sensations. A large part of
his time was spent in going from race-course to
race-course; they raced a specially flimsy breed of

54

THE DREAM

horses in those days. There again he dressed with
care. In the illustrated papers in the public library
I would see photographs of Lord Bramble, wiih a
silk hat—a top hat, you know—cocked very much
on one side ‘in the Paddock’ or ‘snapped with a
lady friend.’ There was much betting and know¬
ingness about this horse-racing. His Lordship dined
with comparative intelligence, erring only a little on
the excessive side with the port. People still smoked
in those days, and Lord Bramble would consume
three or four cigars a day. Pipes he thought ple¬
beian and cigarettes effeminate. He could read a
newspaper but not a book, being incapable of sus¬
tained attention; after dinner in town he commonly
went to a theatre or music-hall where women could
be seen, more or less undraped. The clothing of
that time filled such people as Lord Bramble with a
coy covetousness for nakedness. The normal beauty
of the human body was a secret and a mystery,
and half the art and decoration of Chessing Hanger
House played stimulatingly with the forbidden
vision.

“In that past existence of mine I took the way of
life of Lord Bramble as a matter of course, but now
that I recall it I begin to see the enormous absurdity
of these assassins of frightened birds, these sup¬
porters of horses and ostlers, these peepers at femi¬
nine thighs and shoulder-blades. Their women sym¬
pathised with their gunmanship, called their horses
‘the dears,’ cultivated dwarfed and crippled breeds
of pet dogs, and yielded the peeps expected of them.

“Such was the life of the aristocratic sort of people
in those days. They set the tone of what was con-

THE DREAM

55

sidered a hard, bright, healthy life. The rest of
the community admired them greatly and imitated
them to the best of its ability. The tenant farmer,
if he could not shoot pheasants, shot rabbits, and
if he could not bet twenty-pound notes at the
fashionable race-meeting at Goodwood, put his half-
crown upon his fancy at the Cliffstone races on
By ford Downs—w r ith his hat cocked over one eye
as much like Lord Bramble and King Edward as
possible.

“Great multitudes of people there were whose
lives were shaped completely by the habits and
traditions of these leaders. There was my Uncle
John Julip for example. His father had been a
gardener and his grandfather before him, and almost
all his feminine ancestry and his aunts and cousins
were, as the phrase went, ‘in service.’ None of the
people round and about the downstairs of Chessing
Hanger had natural manners; all were dealing in
some more or less plausible imitation of some real
lady or gentleman. My Uncle John Julip found his
ideal in a certain notorious Sir John ffrench-Cuth-
bertson. He sought similar hats and adopted
similar attitudes.

“He bet heavily in imitation of his model, but he
bet less fortunately. This my aunt resented, but
she found great comfort in the way in which his
clothing and gestures under-studied Sir John.

“ Tf only he’d been born a gentleman,’ said my
aunt, ‘everything ’ud a-been all right. ’E’s a natural
sportsman; ’e eats ’is ’eart out in the gardens.’

“He certainly did not work his heart out. I do
not remember ever seeing him dig or carry or wheel

56

THE DREAM

a barrow. My memory of him in the garden is
of one who stood, one hand gripping a hoe as if it
were a riding whip under the tail of his coat, and the
other gesticulating or pointing out what had to be
done.

“To my father and myself he was always con¬
sciously aristocratic, bearing himself in the grand
manner. This he did, although my father was a
third as tall again as he was and far more abundantly
intelligent. He always called my father ‘Smith.’

“ ‘What are you going to do with that boy, Smith?’
he would ask. ‘Seems to me, wants feedin’ up and
open air.’

“My father, who secretly shared the general view
that my Uncle John under happier stars would have
made a very fine gentleman, always tried, as he ex¬
pressed it, ‘to keep his end up’ by calling my uncle
‘John.’ He would answer, ‘Carn’t say as I’ve
rightly settled that, John. ’E’s a regular book-worm
nowadays, say what you like to him.’

“ ‘Books!’ said my Uncle John Julip with a con¬
centrated scorn of books that was essentially Eng¬
lish. ‘You can’t get anything out of books that
’asn’t been put into them. It stands to reason.
There’s nothing in books that didn’t first come out
of the sile. Books is flattened flowers at the best,
as ’is Lordship said at dinner only the other night.’

“My father was much struck by the idea. ‘That’s
what I tell ’im,’ he said—inexactly.

“ ‘Besides, who’s going to put anything into a
book that’s worth knowing?’ said my uncle. ‘It’s
like expecting these here tipsters in the papers to

THE DREAM 57

give away something worth keeping to theirselves.
Not it!’

“ ‘ ’Arf the time/ my father agreed, T expect
they’re telling you lies in these books of yours and
larfing at you. All the same/ he reflected with an
abrupt lapse from speculation to reverence, ‘there’s
One Book, John.’

“He had remembered the Bible.

“ ‘I wasn’t speaking of that, Smith/ said my uncle

sharply. ‘Sufficient unto the day- I mean,

that’s Sunday Stuff.’

“I hated my days of trial in the gardens. Once
or twice during that unpleasant month I was sent
with messages up to the kitchen and once to the
pantry of the great house. There I said something
unfortunate for my uncle, something that was to
wipe out all possibility of a gardener’s career for me.

“The butler, Mr. Petterton, w T as also a secondary
aristocrat, but in a larger and quite different manner
from that of my uncle. He towered up and looked
down the slopes of himself, his many chins were
pink and stabbed by his collar, and his hair was
yellow and very shiny. I had to deliver into his
hands a basket of cucumbers and a bunch of blue
flowers called borage used in the mixing of summer
drinks. He was standing at a table talking respect¬
fully to a foxy little man in tweeds who was eating
bread-and-cheese and drinking beer; this I was to
learn later was Lord Bramble’s agent. There was
also a young footman in this room, a subterranean
room it was with heavily barred windows, and he
was cleaning silver plate with exemplary industry.

58

THE DREAM

“ ‘So you brought this from the gardens/ said
Mr. Petterton with fine irony. ‘And may I ask why
Mr.—why Sir John did not condescend to bring them
himself?’

“ ‘ ’E tole me to bring them/ I said.

“ ‘And pray who may you be?’

“ ‘I’m ’Arry Smith/ I said. ‘Mr. Julip, Vs my
uncle.’

“‘Ah!’ said Mr. Petterton and was struck by a
thought. ‘That’s the son of Smith who’s a sort of
greengrosher in Cliffstone.’

“ ‘Cherry Gardens, sir, we live at.’

“ ‘Haven’t seen you over here before, my boy.
Have you ever visited us before?’

“ ‘Not ’ere, sir.’

“ ‘Not here! But you come over to the gardens
perhaps?’

“ ‘Nearly every Sunday, sir.’

“ ‘Exactly. And usually I suppose, Master Smith,
there’s something to carry back?’

“ ‘Almost always, sir.’

“ ‘Something a bit heavy?’

“ ‘Not too heavy,’ I said bravely.

“ ‘You see, sir?’ said Mr. Petterton to the foxy
little man in tweeds.

“I began to realise that something unpleasant
was in the wind when this latter person set himself
to cross-examine me in a rapid, snapping manner.
What was it I carried? I became very red about
the face and ears and declared I did not know. Did
I ever carry grapes? I didn’t know. Pears? I
didn’t know. Celery? I didn’t know.

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59

“ ‘Well, I know,’ said the agent. 7 know. So
why should I ask you further? Get out of here.’

“I went back to my uncle and said nothing to
him of this very disagreeable conversation, but I
knew quite well even then that I had not heard the
last of this matter.”

CHAPTER THE THIRD

MISFORTUNES COME UPON THE SMITH FAMILY

§ 1

“And now/’ said Sarnac, “I have to tell of a tor¬
nado of mischances that broke up our precarious
little home at Cherry Gardens altogether. In that
casual, planless, over-populated world there were no
such things as security or social justice as we should
understand these words nowadays. It is hard for us
to imagine its universal ramshackle insecurity.
Think of it. The whole world floated economically
upon a cash and credit system that was fundamen¬
tally fictitious and conventional, there were no ade¬
quate protections against greedy abuses of those
monetary conventions, no watch kept over world-
production and world-consumption, no knowledge
of the variations of climate year by year, and the
fortunes not only of individuals but of states and
nations fluctuated irrationally and uncontrollably.
It was a world in which life was still almost as un¬
safe for men and women as life remains to-day for
a field-mouse or a midge, which is never safe from
one moment to another in a world of cats and owls
and swallows and the like. People were born hap¬
hazard, gladdened, distressed, glorified or killed
haphazard, and no one was ready for either their
births or their deaths. Sudden death there is still

60

THE DREAM

61

in the world, a bright adventure—that lightning
yesterday might have killed all or any of us, but
such death is a rare thing and a clean thing. There
is none of the distressful bearing-down to death
through want, anxiety, and illness ill-tended and
misunderstood, that was the common experience in
the past. And one death does not devastate a dozen
or more lives as deaths often did in the old days.
A widow in the old days had lost not only her lover
but her ‘living.’ Yet life is full of subtle compensa¬
tions. We did not feel our endless dangers in those
days. We had a wonderful power of disregard until
the chances struck us.

“All children,” said Sarnac, “start with an abso¬
lute confidence in the permanence of the things they
find about them. Disillusionment about safety pos¬
tulates clear-headedness. You could not realise
your dangers unless you were clear-headed, and if
you were clear-headed you had the fortitude to face
your dangers. That old world was essentially a
world of muddle-headed sophisticated children, blind
to the universal catastrophe of the top-heavy and
collapsing civilisation in which they played their
parts. They thought that life was generally safe in
a world of general insecurity. Misfortune aston¬
ished everyone in those days, though I cannot under¬
stand why they should have been astonished at any
misfortune.

“The first blow fell without notice about six
weeks after I had come back from Chessing Hanger
to my last half year of schooling before I became a
gardener. It was late afternoon and I was home
from school. I was downstairs reading a book and

62

THE DREAM

my mother was clearing away tea and grumbling
at Fanny who wanted to go out. The lamp was lit,
and both I and my father who was having what he
called ‘a bit of a read at the noosepaper’ were as
close up to its insufficient light as we could get. We
heard the shop bell jangle overhead.

" 'Drat it!’ said my father. ‘Whaddey want this
time o’ day?’

"He removed his spectacles. He had bought a
pair haphazard at a pawnbroker’s shop and always
used them when he read. They magnified his large
mild eyes very greatly. He regarded us protestingly.
What did they want? We heard the voice of Uncle
John Julip calling down the staircase.

" ‘Mort’mer,’ he said in a voice that struck me
as unusual. I had never heard him call my father
anything but Smith before.

" 'That you, John?’ said my father standing up.

" 'It’s me. I want to speak to you.’

" ‘Come down and ’ave some tea, John,’ cried my
father at the bottom of the stairs.

" 'Somethin’ to tell you. You better come up
here. Somethin’ serious.’

“I speculated if it could be any misdeed of mine
he had come over about. But my conscience was
fairly clear.

" ‘Now whatever can it be?’ asked my father.

“ ‘You better go up and arst ’im,’ my mother
suggested.

"My father went.

"I heard my uncle say something about, ‘We’re
busted. We’ve bin give away and we’re busted,’
and then the door into the shop closed. We all

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63

listened to the movements above. It sounded as
though Uncle Julip was walking up and down as
he talked. My sister Fanny in her hat and jacket
flitted unobtrusively up the stairs and out. After
a time Prue came in; she had been helping teacher
tidy up, she said, though I knew better. Then after
a long interval my father came downstairs alone.

“He went to the hearthrug like one in a trance
and stood, staring portentously in order to make
my mother ask what was the matter. ‘Why hasn’t
John come down for a bit of tea or something?
Where’s he gone, Morty?’

“ ‘ ’E’s gorn for a van,’ said my father; ‘that’s
where ’e’s gone. For a van.’

“ ‘Whatever for?’ asked my mother.

“ ‘For a removal,’ said my father. ‘That’s what
for.’

“ ‘Removal?’

“ ‘We got to put ’em up ’ere for a night or so.’

“ ‘Put ’em up! Who?’

“ ‘ ’Im and Adelaide. He’s coming to Cherry
Gardens.’

“ ‘You done mean, Morty, ’e’s lost ’is situation?’

“ ‘I do. S’Lordship turned against ’im. Mis¬
chief ’as been made. Spying. And they managed
to get ’im out of it. Turned out ’e is. Tole to go.’

“ ‘But surely they give ’im notice!’

“ ‘Not a bit of it. S’Lordship came down to the
gardens ’ot and strong. “ ’Ere,” ’e said, “get out of
it!” Like that ’e said it. “You thank your lucky
stars,” ’e said, “I ain’t put the ’tecs on to you and
your snivellin’ brother-in-law.” Yes. S’Lordship
said that.’

64

THE DREAM

“ ‘But what did ’e mean by it, Morty?’

“ ‘Mean? ’E meant that certain persons who shall
be nameless ’ad put a suspicion on John, told lies
about ’im and watched ’im. Watched ’im they did
and me. They’ve drawed me into it, Martha.
They’ve drawed in young ’Arry. They’ve made up
a tale about us. . . . I always said we was a bit
too regular. . . . There it is, ’e ain’t a ’ead gardener
any more. ’E ain’t going to ’ave references give
’im; ’e ain’t ever going to ’ave another regular job.
’E’s been betrayed and ruined, and there we are!’

“ ‘But they say ’e took sompthing?—my brother
John took sompthing?’

“ ‘Surplus projuce. What’s been a perquisite of
every gardener since the world began. . . .’

“I sat with burning ears and cheeks pretending
not to hear this dreadful conversation. No one
knew of my own fatal share in my uncle’s downfall.
But already in my heart, like the singing of a lark
after a thunderstorm, was arising a realisation that
now I might never become a gardener. My mother
expressed her consternation brokenly. She asked
incredulous questions which my father dealt with
in an oracular manner. Then suddenly my mother
pounced savagely on my sister Prue, reproaching
her for listening to what didn’t concern her instead
of washing up.”

“This is a very circumstantial scene,” said
Radiant.

“It was the first great crisis of my dream life,”
said Sarnac. “It is very vivid in my memory. I
can see again that old kitchen in which we lived
and the faded table-cloth and the paraffin lamp with

THE DREAM

65

its glass container. I think if you gave me time I
could tell you everything there was in that room.”

“What’s a hearthrug?” asked Firefly suddenly.
“What sort of thing was your hearthrug?”

“Like nothing on earth to-day. A hearthrug was
a sort of rug you put in front of a coal fire, next
to the fender, which prevented the ashes creeping
into the room. This one my father had made out
of old clothes, trousers and such-like things, bits of
flannel and bits of coarse sacking, cut into strips and
sewn together. He had made it in the winter even¬
ings as he sat by the fireside, sewing industriously.”

“Had it any sort of pattern?”

“None. But I shall never tell my story, if you
ask questions. I remember that my uncle, when
he had made his arrangements about the van, came
in for a bread-and-cheese supper before he walked
back to Chessing Hanger. He was very white and
distressed looking, Sir John had all faded away from
him; he was like a man who had been dragged out
from some hiding-place, he was a very distressed
and pitiful man exposed to the light. I remember
my mother asked him, ‘’Ow’s Adelaide taking it?’

“My uncle assumed an expression of profound
resignation. ‘Starts a new pain,’ he said bitterly.
‘At a time like this.’

“My father and mother exchanged sympathetic
glances.

“ ‘I tell you-’ said my uncle, but did not say

what he told us.

“A storm of weak rage wrung him. ‘If I knew
who’d done all this,’ he said. ‘That—that cat of
a ’ousekeeper—cat I call her—she’s got someone

66 THE DREAM

what wanted my place. If she and Petterton
framed it up-’

“He struck the table, but half-heartedly.

“My father poured him out some beer.

“ ‘Ugh!’ said my uncle and emptied the glass.

“ ‘Got to face it,’ said my uncle, feeling better.
‘Got to go through with it. I suppose with all
these tuppenny-apenny villa gardens ’ere there’s
jobbing work to be got. I’ll get something all
right. . . . Think of it! Jobbing gardener! Me
—a Jobber! By the Day! It’ll set up some of
these ’ere season-ticket clerks no end to ’ave Lord
Bramble’s gardener dragging a lawn-mower for
them. I can see ’em showing me to their friends out
of the window. Bin ’ead-gardener to a Lord, they’ll
say. Well, well-!

“ ‘It’s a come-down,’ said my father when my
uncle had departed. ‘Say what you like, it’s a come¬
down.’

“My mother was preoccupied with the question
of their accommodation. ‘She’ll ’ave to ’ave the
sofa in the sitting-room I expect, and ’e’ll ’ave a
bit of a shake-up on the floor. Don’t suppose she’ll
like .it. They’ll ’ave their own bedding of course.
But Adelaide isn’t the sort to be comfortable on a
sofa.’

“Poor woman! she was not. Although my uncle
and my father and mother all pointed out to her
the untimeliness and inconsiderateness of her con¬
duct she insisted upon suffering so much that a
doctor had to be called in. He ordered a prompt
removal to a hospital for an immediate operation.

“Those were days,” said Sarnac, “of the profound-

THE DREAM

67

est ignorance about the body. The ancient Greeks
and the Arabs had done a little anatomy during
their brief phases of intellectual activity, but the
rest of the world had only been studying physiology
in a scientific way for about three hundred years.
People in general still knew practically nothing of
vital processes. As I have told you they even bore
children by accident. And living the queer lives
they did, with abnormal and ill-prepared food in
a world of unchecked infections, they found the
very tissues of the bodies going wrong and breaking
out into the queerest growths. Parts of these bodies
would cease to do anything but change into a sort
of fungoid proliferation-”

“Their bodies were like their communities!” said
Radiant.

“The same sort of thing. They had tumours and
cancers and such-like things in their bodies and
Cherry-Garden urban-districts on their country¬
sides. But these growths!—they are dreadful even
to recall.”

“But surely,” said Willow, “in the face of such
a horrible possibility which might afflict anyone, all
the world must have wanted to push on with physio¬
logical research.”

“Didn’t they see,” said Sunray, “that all these
things were controllable and curable?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Sarnac. “They didn’t
positively like these tumours and cancers, but the
community was too under-vitalised to put up a real
fight against these miseries. And everyone thought
that he or she would escape—until it had them.
There was a general apathy. And the priests and

68

THE DREAM

journalists and so forth, the common opinion
makers, were jealous of scientific men. They did
their best to persuade people that there was nothing
hopeful in scientific research, they did all they could
to discredit its discoveries, to ridicule its patient
workers and set people against them.”

“That’s what puzzles me most,” said Sunray.

“Their mental habits were different. Their minds
hadn’t been trained to comprehensive thinking.
Their thinking was all in compartments and patches.
The morbid growths in their bodies were nothing
to the morbid growths in their minds.”

§ 2

“My aunt in the hospital, with that lack of con¬
sideration for my uncle that had always distin¬
guished her, would neither recover nor die. She was
a considerable expense to him and no help; she
added greatly to his distresses. After some days
and at the urgent suggestion of my mother he
removed himself from our sitting-room to a two-
roomed lodging in the house of a bricklayer in an
adjacent street; into this he crowded his furniture
from Chessing Hanger, but he frequented my
father’s shop and showed a deepening attachment
to my father’s company.

“He was not so successful a jobbing gardener as
he had anticipated. His short contemptuous w r ay
with his new clients in the villas of Cliffstone failed
to produce the respect he designed it to do; he would
speak of their flower-beds as Two penn’orths of
all-sorts’ and compare their gardens to a table-cloth
or a window box; and instead of welcoming these

THE DREAM

69

home-truths, they resented them. But they had
not the manliness to clear up this matter by a
good straightforward argument in which they would
have had their social position very exactly defined;
they preferred to keep their illusions and just ceased
to employ him. Moreover, his disappointment with
my aunt produced a certain misogyny, which took
the form of a refusal to take orders from the wives
of his patrons when they were left in sole charge
of the house. As many of these wives had a con¬
siderable influence over their husbands, this too
injured my uncle’s prospects. Consequently there
were many days when he had nothing to do but
stand about our shop to discuss with my father as
hearer the defects of Cliffstone villa-residents, the
baseness of Mr. Petterton and that cat (‘cat’ he
called her) and the probable unworthiness of any
casual customer who strayed into range of comment.

“Nevertheless my uncle was resolved not to be
defeated without a struggle. There was a process
which he called 'keeping his pecker up,’ which neces¬
sitated, I could not but perceive, periodic visits to
the Wellington public-house at the station corner.
From these visits he returned markedly more garru¬
lous, more like Sir John ffrench-Cuthbertson, and
exhaling a distinctively courageous smell when he
coughed or breathed heavily. After a time, as his
business difficulties became more oppressive, my
father participated in these heartening excursions.
They broadened his philosophical outlook but made
it, I fancied, rather less distinct.

“My uncle had some indefinite sum of money in
the Post Office Savings Bank, and in his determina-

70

THE DREAM

tion not to be beaten without a struggle he did some
courageous betting on what he called ‘certs’ at the
race-meetings on Byford Downs.”

“ ‘Cert’ beats me altogether,” said Radiant.

“A ‘cert’ was a horse that was certain to win and
never did. A ‘dead cert’ was an extreme form of
the ‘cert.’ You cannot imagine how the prospects
and quality of the chief race-horses were discussed
throughout the land. The English were not a no¬
madic people, only a minority could ride horses,
but everybody could bet on them. The King was,
so to speak, head of the racing just as he was head
of the army. He went in person to the great race-
meetings as if to bless and encourage the betting
of his subjects. So that my Uncle John Julip was
upheld by the most loyal and patriotic sentiments
when he wasted his days and his savings on Byford
Downs. On several of these occasions my father
went with him and wrestled with fortune also. They
lost generally, finally they lost most of what they
had, but on one or two occasions, as my uncle put
it, they ‘struck it rich.’ One day they pitched upon
a horse called Rococo, although it was regarded as
the very reverse of a ‘cert’ and the odds were heavy
against it, but an inner light seems to have guided
my uncle; it came in first and they won as much
as thirty-five pounds, a very large sum for them.
They returned home in a state of solemn exaltation,
which was only marred by some mechanical dif¬
ficulty in pronouncing the name of the winning
horse. They began well but after the first syllable
they went on more like a hen that had laid an egg

THE DREAM

71

than like rational souls who had spotted a winner.
‘Rocococo’ they would say or ‘Rococococo.’ Or they
would end in a hiccup. And though each tried to
help the other out, they were not really helpful
to each other. They diffused an unusually powerful
odour of cigars and courage. Never had they smelt
so courageous. My mother made them tea.

“ ‘Tea!’ said my uncle meaningly. He did not
actually refuse the cup she put before him, but he
pushed it a little aside.

“For some moments it seemed doubtful whether
he was going to say something very profound or
whether he was going to be seriously ill. Mind
triumphed over matter. ‘Knew it would come,
Marth,’ he said. ‘Knew allong it would come.
Directly I heard name. Roc-’ He paused.

“ ‘Cococo/ clucked my father.

“ ‘Cocococo—hiccup/ said my uncle. ‘I knew
ourour ’ad come. Some men, Smith, some men ’ave
that instink. I would ’ave put my shirt on that
’orse, Marth—only. . . . They wouldn’t ’ave took
my shirt.’

“He looked suddenly very hard at me. ‘They
wouldn’t ’ave took it, ’Arry,’ he said. ‘They done
take shirts!’ “ ‘No,’ he said and became profoundly
thoughtful.

“Then he looked up. ‘Thirty-six to one against,’
he said. ‘We’d ’ave ’ad shirts for a lifetime.’

“My father saw it from a wider, more philosophi¬
cal point of view. ‘Might never ’ave been spared to
wear ’em out,’ he said. ‘Better as it is, John.’

“ ‘And mind you,’ said my uncle; ‘this is only

72

THE DREAM

a beginning. Once I start spotting ’em I go on
spotting ’em—mind that. This Roc-’

“ ‘Cococo.’

“ ‘Cocococo —whatever it is, s’only a beginning.
S’only the firs’-ray-sunlight V a glorious day.’

“ ‘In that case,’ said my mother, ’t’seems to me
some of us might have a share.’

“ ‘Certainly,’ said my uncle, ‘certainly, Marth.’
And amazingly he handed me a ten-shilling piece—
in those days we had gold coins and this was a little
disk of gold. Then he handed Prue the same. He
gave a whole sovereign, a golden pound, to Fanny
and a five-pound Bank of England note to my
mother.

“ ‘Hold on!’ said my father warningly.

“ ‘Tha’s a’ right, Smith,’ said my uncle with a
gesture of princely generosity. ‘ You share, seven¬
teen pounce ten. Six pounce ten leaves ’leven.
Lessee. One ’n’ five six—seven—eight—nine—ten
—’leven. Here!’

“My father took the balance of the money with
a puzzled expression. Something eluded him.
‘Yers,’ he said; ‘but-’

“His mild eye regarded the ten-shilling piece I
still held exposed in my hand. I put it away im¬
mediately but his gaze followed my hand towards
my pocket until it met the table edge and got into
difficulties.

“ ‘Thout the turf, Smith, there wouldn’t be such
a country as England,’ said my Uncle John, and
rounded his remarks off with, ‘Mark my words.’

“My father did his best to do so.”

THE DREAM

73

§ 3

"But this hour of success was almost the only-
bright interlude in a steady drift to catastrophe. In
a little while I gathered from a conversation between
my mother and my father that we were ‘behind with
the rent.’ That was a quarterly payment we paid
to the enterprising individual who owned our house.
I know all that sounds odd to you, but that is the
way things were done. If we got behind with our
rent the owner could turn us out.”

"But where?” asked Firefly.

“Out of the house. And we weren’t allowed to
stay in the street. But it is impossible for me to
explain everything of that sort in detail. We were
behind with the rent and catastrophe impended.
And then my sister Fanny ran away from us.

"In no other respect,” said Sarnac, "is it so dif¬
ficult to get realities over to you and make you
understand how I thought and felt in that other
life than in matters of sex. Nowadays sex is so
simple. Here we are free and frank men and
women; we are trained so subtly that we scarcely
know we are trained, not to be stupidly competitive,
to control jealous impulses, to live generously, to
honour the young. Love is the link and flower of
our choicest friendships. We take love by the way
as we take our food and our holidays, the main
thing in our lives is our creative work. But in that
dark tormented world in which I passed my dream
life, all the business of love was covered over and
netted in by restraints and put in fetters that fretted
and tortured. I will tell you at last how I was

74

THE DREAM

killed. Now I want to convey to you something
of the reality of this affair of Fanny.

“Even in this world,” said Sarnac, “my sister
Fanny would have been a conspicuously lovely girl.
Her eyes could be as blue as heaven, or darken with
anger or excitement so that they seemed black.
Her hair had a brave sweep in it always. Her smile
made you ready to do anything for her; her laughter
made the world clean and brightly clear about her
even when it was touched with scorn. And she was
ignorant- I can hardly describe her ignorance.

“It was Fanny first made me feel that ignorance
was shameful. I have told you the sort of school
we had and of our religious teachers. When I was
nine or ten and Fanny was fifteen, she was already
scolding me for fumbling with the pronunciation of
words and particularly with the dropping of the
aspirate.

“ ‘Harry/ she said, ‘if you call me Fenny again
it’s war and pinching. My name’s Fanny and
yours is Harry and don’t you forget it. It’s not
English we talk in this place; it’s mud.’

“Something had stung her. She had been talking
with someone with a better accent and she had been
humiliated. I think that someone may have
mocked her. Some chance acquaintance it must
have been, some ill-bred superior boy upon the Cliff-
stone promenade. But Fanny was setting out now
to talk good English and make me do the same,
with a fury all her own.

“ ‘If only I could talk French/ she said. ‘There’s
France in sight over there; all its lighthouses wink¬
ing at us, and all we’ve got to say is, “Parley vous

THE DREAM

75

Francy,” and grin as if it was a joke.’ She brought
home a sixpenny book which professed but failed
to teach her French. She was reading voraciously,
greedily, to know. She read endless novels but also
she was reading all sorts of books, about the stars,
about physiology (in spite of my mother’s wild
scoldings at the impropriety of reading a book ‘with
pictures of yer insides’ in it), about foreign countries.
Her passion that I should learn was even greater
than her own passion for knowledge.

“At fourteen she left school and began to help
earn her living. My mother had wanted her to
go into ‘service,’ but she had resisted and resented
this passionately. While that proposal was still
hanging over her, she went off by herself to Cliff-
stone and got a job as assistant book-keeper in a
pork butcher’s shop. Before a year was out she was
book-keeper, for her mind was as neat as it was
nimble. She earned enough money to buy books
and drawing material for me and to get herself
clothes that scandalised all my mother’s ideas of
what was becoming. Don’t imagine she ‘dressed
well,’ as we used to say; she experimented boldly,
and some of her experiments were cheap and tawdry.

“I could lecture to you for an hour,” said Sarnac,
“of what dress and the money to buy dresses meant
for a woman in the old world.

“A large part of my sister’s life was hidden from
me; it would have been hidden altogether but for
the shameless tirades of my mother, who seemed
to prefer to have an audience while she scolded
Fanny. I can see now that my mother was bitterly
jealous of Fanny because of her unexhausted youth,

76

THE DREAM

but at the time I was distressed and puzzled at the
gross hints and suggestions that flew over my head.
Fanny had a maddening way of not answering back
or answering only by some minor correction. ‘It’s
horrible, mother/ she would say. ‘Not ’orrible.’

“Behind her defensive rudenesses, unlit, unguided,
poor Fanny was struggling with the whole riddle
of life, presented to her with an urgency no man
can fully understand. Nothing in her upbringing
had ever roused her to the passion for real work
in the world; religion for her had been a grimace
and a threat; the one great reality that had come
through to her thoughts was love. The novels she
read all told of love, elusively, partially, and an
impatience in her imagination and in her body leapt
to these hints. Love whispered to her in the light
and beauty of things about her; in the moonlight,
in the spring breezes. Fanny could not but know
that she was beautiful. But such morality as our
world had then was a morality of abject suppression.
Love was a disgrace, a leering fraud, a smutty joke.
She was not to speak about it, not to look towards
it until some good man—the pork butcher was a
widower and seemed likely to be the good man in
her case—came and spoke not of love indeed but
marriage. He would marry her and hurry home
with his prize and tear the wrappings from her
loveliness, clumsily, stupidly, in a mood of morbidly
inflamed desire.”

“Sarnac,” said Firefly, “you are horrible.”

“No,” said Sarnac. “But that world of the past
was horrible. Most of the women, your ancestors,
suffered such things. And that was only the begin-

THE DREAM

77

ning of the horror. Then came the birth and
desecration of the children. Think what a delicate,
precious and holy thing a child is! They were be¬
gotten abundantly and abnormally, born reluctantly,
and dropped into the squalour and infection of an
overcrowded disordered world. Bearing a child was
not the jolly wholesome process we know to-day;
in that diseased society it was an illness, it counted
as an illness, for nearly every woman. Which the
man her husband resented—grossly. Five or six
children in five or six years and a pretty girl was
a cross, worried wreck of a woman, bereft of any
shred of spirit or beauty. My poor scolding, worried
mother was not fifty when she died. And one saw
one’s exquisite infants grow up into ill-dressed, un¬
der-nourished, ill-educated children. Think of the
agony of shamed love that lay beneath my poor
mother’s slaps and scoldings! The world has for¬
gotten now the hate and bitterness of disappointed
parentage. That was the prospect of the moral life
that opened before my sister Fanny; that was the
antistrophe to the siren song of her imagination.

“She could not believe this of life and love. She
experimented with love and herself. She was, my
mother said, 'a bold, bad girl.’ She began I know
with furtive hissings and huggings in the twilight,
with boy schoolfellows, with clerks and errand-boys.
Some gleam of nastiness came into these adventures
of the dusk and made her recoil. At any rate she
became prim and aloof to Cherry Gardens, but only
because she was drawn to the bands and lights and
prosperity of Cliffstone. That was when she began
to read and correct her accent. You have heard of

78

THE DREAM

our old social stratifications. She wanted to be like
a lady; she wanted to meet a gentleman. She
imagined there were gentlemen who were really
gentle, generous, wise and delightful, and she
imagined that some of the men she saw on the cliff
promenade at Cliffst.one were gentlemen. She began
to dress herself as I have told.

“There were scores of such girls in every town
in Europe,” said Sarnac, “turning their backs on
their dreadful homes. In a sort of desperate hope.

“When you hear about the moral code of the
old world,” Sarnac went on, “you are apt to think
of it as a rule that everyone respected in exactly
the same way that you think everyone believed the
professed religions. We have not so much a moral
code now as a moral training, and our religion in¬
volves no strain on reason or instincts, and so it is
difficult for us to understand the tortuosity and
evasions and defiances and general furtiveness and
meanness of a world in which nobody really under¬
stood and believed the religious creeds, not even the
priests, and nobody was really convinced to the
bone of the sweetness and justice of the moral code.
In that distant age almost everybody was sexually
angry or uncomfortable or dishonest; the restraints
we had did not so much restrain as provoke people.
It is difficult to imagine it now.”

“Not if you read the old literature,” said Sunray.
“The novels and plays are pathological.”

“So you have my pretty sister Fanny, drawn by
impulses she did not understand, flitting like a moth
out of our dingy home in Cherry Gardens to the
lights, bright lights of hope they seemed to her,

THE DREAM

79

about the bandstand and promenade of Cliffstone.
And there staying in the lodging-houses and board¬
ing-houses and hotels were limited and thwarted
people, keeping holiday, craving for bright excite¬
ments, seeking casual pleasures. There were wives
who had tired of their husbands and husbands long
weary of their wives, there were separated people
who could not divorce and young men who could
not marry because they could not afford to maintain
a family. With their poor hearts full of naughti¬
ness, rebellious suppressions, jealousies, resentments.
And through this crowd, eager, provocative, and
defenceless, flitted my pretty sister Fanny A

§ 4

“On the evening before Fanny ran away my
father and my uncle sat in the kitchen by the fire
discoursing of politics and the evils of life. They
had both been keeping up their peckers very reso¬
lutely during the day and this gave a certain ram¬
bling and recurrent quality to their review. Their
voices were hoarse, and they drawled and were loud
and emphatic and impressive. It was as if they
spoke for the benefit of unseen listeners. Often they
would both be talking together. My mother was
in the scullery washing up the tea-things and I was
sitting at the table near the lamp trying to do some
homework my teacher had given me, so far as the
distraction of this conversation so close to me and
occasional appeals to me to ‘mark’ this or that,
would permit. Prue was reading a book called Min¬
istering Children to which she was much addicted.
Fanny had been helping my mother until she was

80

THE DREAM

told she was more a hindrance than a help. Then
she came and stood at my side looking over my
shoulder at what I was doing.

“ ‘What’s spoiling trade and ruining the country/
said my uncle, ‘is these ’ere strikes. These ’ere strikes
reg’ler destrushion—destruction for the country.’

“ ‘Stop everything/ said my father. ‘It stands
to reason.’

“ ‘They didn’t ought to be allowed. These ’ere
miners’r paid and paid ’andsomely. Paid ’andsomely
they are. ’Andsomely. Why! I’d be glad of the
pay they get, glad of it. They ’as bulldogs, they ’as
pianos. Champagne. Me and you, Smith, me and
you and the middle classes generally; we don’t get
pianos. We don’t get champagne. Not-tit. . . .’

“ ‘Ought to be a Middle Classes Union,’ said my
father, ‘keep these ’ere workers in their places. They
’old up the country and stop trade. Trade! Trade’s
orful. Why! people come in now and look at what
you got and arst the price of this and that. Think
twice they do before they spend a sixpence. . . .
And the coal you’re expected to sell nowadays! I
tell ’em, if this ’ere strike comes off this’s ’bout the
last coal you’re likely to see, good or bad. Straight
out, I tell ’em. . . .’

“ ‘You’re not working, Harry,’ said Fanny with¬
out troubling to lower her voice. ‘Don’t see how
you can work, wuth all this jawing going on. Come
out for a walk.’

“I glanced up at her and rose at once. It wasn’t
often Fanny asked me to go for a walk with her.
I put my books away.

THE DREAM 81

“ 'Going out for a bit of fresh air, mother/ said
Fanny, taking her hat down from its peg.

“ ‘No, you don’t—not at this time/ cried my
mother from the scullery. ‘Ain’t I said, once and
for all-?’

“ ‘It’s all right, mother, Harry’s going with me.
He’ll see no one runs aw^ay with me and ruins me.

. . . You’ve said it once and for all—times enough.’

“My mother made no further objection, but she
flashed a look of infinite hate at my sister.

“We went upstairs and out into the street.

“For a time we said nothing, but I had a sense
that I was going to be ‘told things.’

“ ‘I’ve had about enough of all this/ Fanny began
presently. ‘What’s going to become of us? Father
and uncle ’ve been drinking all day; you can see
they’re both more than half-screwed. Both of ’em.
It’s every day now. It’s worse and worse and worse.
Uncle hasn’t had a job these ten days. Father’s
always with him. The shop’s getting filthy. He
doesn’t sweep it out now for days together.’

“ ‘Uncle seems to have lost ’eart,’ I said, ‘since
he heard that Aunt Adelaide would have to have
that second operation.’

“ ‘Lost heart! He never had any heart to lose.’
My sister Fanny said no more of my uncle—by an
effort. ‘What a home!’ she cried.

“She paused for a moment. ‘Harry,’ she said,
‘I’m going to get out of this. Soon.’

“I asked what she meant by that.

“ ‘Never mind what I mean. I’ve got a situation.
A different sort of situation. . . . Harry, you—-
you care for me, Harry?’

82

THE DREAM

“Professions of affection are difficult for boys of
thirteen. ‘I’d do anything for you, Fanny/ I said
after a pause. ‘You know I would.’

“ ‘And you wouldn’t tell on me?’

“ ‘Whad you take me for?’

“ ‘Nohow?’

“ ‘No’ow.’

“ ‘I knew you wouldn’t/ said Fanny. ‘You’re
the only one of the whole crew I’ll be sorry to leave.
I do care for you, Harry. Straight, I do. I used
to care for mother. Once. But that’s different.
She’s scolded me and screamed at me till it’s gone.
Every bit of it. I can’t help it,—it’s gone. I’ll
think of you, Harry—often.’

“I realised that Fanny was crying. Then when
I glanced at her again her tears were over.

“ ‘Look here, Harry,’ she said, ‘would you do—
something—for me? Something—not so very much
—and not tell? Not tell afterwards, I mean.’

“ ‘I’d do anything, Fanny.’

“ ‘It’s not so very much really. There’s that little
old portmanteau upstairs. I’ve put some things
in it. And there’s a little bundle. I’ve put ’em
both under the bed at the back where even Prying
Prue won’t think of looking. And to-morrow—when
father’s out with uncle like he is now every day,
and mother’s getting dinner downstairs and Prue’s
pretending to help her and sneaking bits of bread
—if you’d bring those down to Cliffstone to Crosby’s
side-door. . . . They aren’t so very heavy.’

“ ‘I ain’t afraid of your portmanteau, Fanny. I’d
carry it more miles than that for you. But where’s

THE DREAM 83

this new situation of yours, Fanny? and why ain’t
you saying a word about it at home?’

“ ‘Suppose I asked you something harder than
carrying a portmanteau, Harry?’

“ ‘I’d do it, Fanny, if I could do it. You know
that, Fanny.’

“ ‘But if it was just to ask no questions of where
I am going and what I am going to do? It’s—it’s
a good situation, Harry. It isn’t hard work.’

“She stopped short. I saw her face by the yellow
light of a street lamp and I was astonished to see
it radiant with happiness. And yet her eyes were
shining with tears. What a Fanny it was, who could
pass in a dozen steps from weeping to ecstasy!

“ ‘Oh! I wish I could tell you all about it, Harry,’
she said. ‘I wish I could tell you all about it. Don’t
you worry about me, Harry, or what’s going to hap¬
pen to me. You help me, and after a bit I’ll write
to you. I will indeed, Harry.’

“ ‘You aren’t going to run away and marry?’ I
asked abruptly. ‘It’d be like you, Fanny, to do that.’

“ ‘I won’t say I am; I won’t say I’m not; I won’t
say anything, Harry. But I’m as happy as the sun¬
rise, Harry! I could dance and sing. If only I can
do it, Harry.’

“ ‘There’s one thing, Fanny.’

“She stopped dead. ‘You’re not going back on
me, Harry?’

“ ‘No. I’ll do what I’ve promised, Fanny. But

-’ I had a moral mind. I hesitated. ‘You’re

not doing anything wrong, Fanny?’

“She shook her head and did not answer for some
moments. The look of ecstasy returned.

84

THE DREAM

“ ‘I’m doing the Tightest thing that ever I did,
Harry, the Tightest thing. If only I can do it. And
you are a dear to help me, a perfect dear.’

“And suddenly she put her arms about me and
drew my face to hers and kissed me and then she
pushed me away and danced a step. ‘I love all the
world to-night/ said Fanny. T love all the world.
Silly old Cherry Gardens! You thought you’d got
me! You thought I’d never get away!’

“She began a sort of chant of escape. ‘To-mor¬
row’s my last day at Crosby’s, my very last day.
For ever and ever. Amen. He’ll never come too
near me again and breathe down my neck. He’ll
never put his fat hand on my bare arm and shove
his face close to mine while he looks at my cash-

sheet. When I get to-, wherever I’m going,

Harry, I’ll want to send him a post card. Good-bye,
Mr. Crosby, good-bye, dear Mr. Crosby. For ever
and ever. Amen!’ She made what I knew to be
her imitation of Mr. Crosby’s voice. ‘You’re the
sort of girl who ought to marry young and have a
steady husband older than yourself, my dear. Did
I ought? And who said you might call me your
dear, dear Mr. Crosby? Twenty-five shillings a
week and pawings about and being called dear,
thrown in. . . . I’m wild to-night, Harry—wild
to-night. I could laugh and scream, and yet I want
to cry, Harry, because I’m leaving you. And leaving
them all! Though why I care I don’t know. Poor,
boozy, old father! Poor, silly, scolding mother!
Some day perhaps I may help them if only I get
away. And you—you’ve got to go on learning and
improving, Harry, learning, learning. Learn and

THE DREAM

85

get out of Cherry Gardens. Never drink. Never
let drink cross your lips. Don’t smoke. For why
should anyone smoke? Take the top side of life,
for it’s easier up there. Indeed, it’s easier. Work
and read, Harry. Learn French—so that when I
come back to see you, we can both talk together.’

“ ‘You’re going to learn French? You’re going
to France?’

“ ‘Farther than France. But not a word, Harry.
Not a word of it. But I wish I could tell you every¬
thing. I can’t. I mustn’t. I’ve given my promise.
I’ve got to keep faith. All one has to do in the
world is to love and keep faith. But I wish mother
had let me help wash-up to-night, my last night.
She hates me. She’ll hate me more yet. ... I
wonder if I’ll keep awake all night or cry myself
to sleep. Let’s race as far as the goods-station,
Harry, and then walk home.’ ”

§ 5

“The next night Fanny did not come home at
all. As the hours passed and the emotion of my
family deepened I began to realise the full enormity
of the disaster that had come upon our home.”

Sarnac paused and smiled. “Never was there so
clinging a dream. I am still half Harry Mortimer
Smith and only half myself. I am still not only in
memory but half in feeling also that young English
barbarian in the Age of Confusion. And yet all
the time I am looking at my story from our point
of view and telling it in Sarnac’s voice. Amidst
this sunshine. ... Was it really a dream? ... I
don’t believe I am telling you a dream.”

86

THE DREAM

“It isn’t a bit like a dream,” said Willow. “It is
a story—a real story. Do you think it was a dream?”

Sunray shook her head. “Go on,” she said to
Sarnac. “Whatever it is, tell it. Tell us how your
family behaved when Fanny ran away.”

“You must keep in mind that all these poor souls
were living in a world of repressions such as seem
almost inconceivable now. You think they had
ideas about love and sex and duty different from
our ideas. We are taught that they had different
ideas. But that is not the truth; the truth is that
they had no clear, thought-out ideas about such
things at all. They had fears and blank prohibi¬
tions and ignorances where we have ideas. Love,
sex, these were things like the enchanted woods of a
fairy tale. It was forbidden even to go in. And—
none of us knew to what extent—Fanny had gone in.

“So that evening was an evening of alarm deepen¬
ing to a sort of moral panic for the whole household.
It seemed to be required of my family that they
should all behave irrationally and violently. My
mother began to fret about half-past nine. ‘I’ve
tole ’er, once for all/ she said, partly to herself but
also for my benefit. Tt’s got to stop.’ She cross-
examined me about where Fanny might be. Had
she said anything about going on the pier? I said
I didn’t know. My mother fumed and fretted.
Even if Fanny had gone on the pier she ought to
be home by ten. I wasn’t sent to bed at the usual
hour so that I saw my father and uncle come in
after the public-house had closed. I forget now why
my uncle came in to us instead of going straight
home, but it was not a very unusual thing for him

THE DREAM

87

to do so. They were already disposed to despon¬
dency and my mother’s white face and anxious
tiding deepened their gloom.

“ 'Mortimer/ said my mother, 'that gal of yours
’as gone a bit too far. Sarf-pars’ ten and she isn’t
’ome yet.’

"' ’Aven’t I tole ’er time after time/ said my
father, ‘she’s got to be in by nine?’

“ 'Not times enough you ’aven’t/ said my mother,
‘and ’ere’s the fruit!’

“ 'I’ve tole ’er time after time/ said my father.
‘Time after time.’ And he continued to repeat this
at intervals throughout the subsequent discussion
until another refrain replaced it.

“My uncle said little at first. He took up his
position on the hearthrug my father had made and
stood there, swaying slightly, hiccupping at inter¬
vals behind his hand, frowning and scrutinising the
faces of the speakers. At last he delivered his judg¬
ment. ‘Somethin’sappened to that girl,’ he said.
'You mark my words.’

“Prue had a mind apt for horrors. 'She’s bin
in ’naccident per’aps/ she said. 'She may’ve bin
knocked down.’

“ 'I’ve tole ’er/ said my father, ‘time after time.’

“ 'If there’s bin ’naccident,’ said my uncle sagely.
‘Well . . . ’nything ma’ve ’appened.’ He repeated
this statement in a louder, firmer voice. ‘ ’Nything
ma’ve ’appened.’

“ ’Stime you went to bed, Prue,’ said my mother,
‘ ’igh time. ’N’ you too, ’Arry.’

“My sister got up with unusual promptitude and

88

THE DREAM

went out of the room. I think she must have had an
idea then of looking for Fanny’s things. I lingered.

“ ‘May’ve been ’naccident, may not,’ said my
mother darkly. ‘Sworse things than accidents.’

“ ‘Whaddyoumean by that, Marth?’ asked my
uncle.

“ ‘Never mind what I mean. That girl’s worried
me times and oft. There’s worse things than acci¬
dents.’

“I listened, thrilled. ‘You be orf to bed, ’Any,’
said my mother.

“Whaddyou got to do,—simple,’ said my uncle,
leaning forward on his toes. ‘Telephone ’ospitals.
Telephone plice. Old Crow at the Wellington
won’t’ve gone to bed. ’Sgot telephone. Good cus¬
tomers. ’E’ll telephone. Mark my words—s’snac-
cident.’

“And then Prue reappeared at the top of the stairs.

“ ‘Mother!’ she said in a loud whisper.

“ ‘You be orf to bed, miss,’ said my mother.
‘ ’Aven’t I got worries enough?’

“ ‘Mother,’ said Prue. ‘You know that little old
portmantle of Fanny’s?’

“Everyone faced a new realisation.

“ ‘Sgorn,’ said Prue. ‘And her two best ’ats and
all ’er undercloe’s and ’er other dress—gorn too.’

“ ‘Then she’s took ’em!’ said my father.

“ ‘And ’erself!’ said my mother.

“ ‘Time after time I tole her,’ said my father.

“ ‘She’s run away!’ said my mother with a scream
in her voice. ‘She’s brought shame and disgrace on
us! She’s run away!’

“ ‘Some one’s got ’old of ’er,’ said my father.

THE DREAM

89

“My mother sat down abruptly. ‘After all I done
for ’er!’ she cried, beginning to weep. ‘With an
honest man ready to marry ’er! Toil and sacrifice,
care and warnings, and she’s brought us to shame
and dishonour! She’s run away! That I should
’ave lived to see this day! Fanny!’

“She jumped up suddenly to go and see with her
own eyes that Prue’s report was true. I made my¬
self as inconspicuous as possible, for I feared some
chance question might reveal my share in our family
tragedy. But I didn’t want to go to bed; I wanted
to hear things out.

“ ‘Sanny good my going to the plice-station for
you on my way ’ome?’ my uncle asked.

“‘Plice!’ said my father. ‘What good’s plice?
Gaw! If I ’ad my ’ands on that villain’s throat
—I’d plice ’im! Bringing shame on me and mine!
Plice! ’Ere’s Fanny, my little daughter Fanny,
beguiled and misled and carried away! . . . I’m
’asty. . . . Yes, John. You go in and tell the
plice. It’s on your way. Tell ’em from me. I
won’t leave not a single stone unturned so’s to bring
’er back.’

“My mother came back whiter than ever. ‘It’s
right enough,’ she said. ‘She’s gorn! She’s off.
While we stand ’ere, disgraced and shamed, she’s
away.’

“ ‘Who with?’ said my father. ‘That’s the ques¬
tion, who with? ’Arry, ’ave you ever seen anyone
about with your sister? Anyone ’anging about?
Any suspicious-looking sort of dressed-up fancy
man? ’Ave you ever?’

“I said I hadn’t.

90

THE DREAM

“But Prue had evidence. She became voluble.
About a week ago she had seen Fanny and a man
coming along from Cliffstone, talking. They hadn’t
seen her; they had been too wrapped up in each
other. Her description of the man was very vague
and was concerned chiefly with his clothes; he had
worn a blue serge suit and a grey felt hat; he was
‘sort of a gentleman like.’ He was a good lot older
than Fanny—Prue wasn’t sure whether he had a
moustache or not.

“My father interrupted Prue’s evidence by a tre¬
mendous saying which I was to hear him repeat
time after time during the next week. ‘Sooner’n
this sh’d’ve ’appened,’ said my father, ‘I’d’ve seen
’er lying dead at my feet —gladly I’d ’ve seen ’er
lying dead at my feet!’

“‘Poor girl!’ said my uncle. ‘Sabitter lesson she
’as before ’er. A bitter lesson! Poo’ chile! Poo’
little Fanny!’

“‘Poor Fanny indeed!’ cried my mother vindic¬
tively, seeing it all, I perceived, from an entirely
different angle. ‘There she is prancin’ about with
’er fancy gentleman now in all ’er fallals; dinners
and wine she’ll ’ave, flowers she’ll ’ave, dresses and
everything. Be took about and shown things!
Shown off and took to theayters. The shame of
it! And us ’ere shamed and disgraced and not a
word to say when the neighbours ask us questions!
’Ow can I look ’em in the face? ’Ow can I look
Mr. Crosby in the face? That man was ready to
go down on ’is bended knees to ’er and worship ’er.
Stout though ’e was. ’E’d ’ave given ’er anything
she arst for—in reason. What ’e could see in ’er.

THE DREAM

91

I could never make out. But see it ’e did. And
now I’ve got to face ’im and tell ’im I’ve told ’im
wrong. Time after time I’ve said to ’im— “You wait.
You wait, Mr. Crosby.” And that ’uzzy!—sly and
stuck-up and deep! Gorn!’

“My father’s voice came booming over my moth¬
er’s shrill outcry. ‘Sooner’n this should’ve ’appened
I’d ’ve seen er dead at my feet!’

“I was moved to protest. But for all my thirteen
years I found myself weeping. ‘ ’Ow d’you know /
I blubbered, ‘that Fanny ’asn’t gone away and got
married? ’Ow d’you know?’

“ ‘Merried! ’ cried my mother. ‘Why should she
run away to be merried? If it was merridge, what
was to prevent ’er bringing ’im ’ome and having ’im
interjuced to us all, right and proper? Isn’t her
own father and mother and ’ome good enough for
her, that she ’as to run away and get merried? When
she could ’ave ’ad it ’ere at St. Jude’s nice and re¬
spectable with your father and your uncle and all
of us and white favours and a carriage and all. I
wish I could ’ope she was merried! I wish there
was a chance of it! ’

“My uncle shook his head in confirmation.

“ ‘Sooner ’n this should’ve ’appened,’ boomed my
father, ‘I’d’ve seen ’er dead at my feet!’

“ ‘Last night,’ said Prue, ‘she said ’er prayers.’

“ ‘Didn’t she always say ’er prayers?’ asked my
uncle, shocked.

“ ‘Not kneeling down,’ said Prue. ‘But last night
she was kneeling quite a long time. She thought I
was asleep but I watched ’er.’

“ ‘That looks bad,’ said my uncle. ‘Y’know,

92

THE DREAM

Smith; that looks bad. I don’t like that praying.
Sominous. I don’t like it.’

“And then suddenly and violently Prue and I
were packed off upstairs to bed.

“For long the sound of their voices went on; the
three of them came up into the shop and stood at
the front door while my uncle gradually took leave,
but what further things they said I did not hear.
But I remember that suddenly I had a brilliant idea,
suggested no doubt by Prue’s scrap of evidence. I
got out of bed and knelt down and said, Tray God,
be kind to my Fanny! Pray God not to be hard
on Fanny! I’m sure she means to get merried. For
ever and ever. Amen.’ And after putting Provi¬
dence upon his honour, so to speak, in this fashion,
I felt less mentally distracted and got back into bed
and presently I fell asleep.”

Sarnac paused.

“It’s all rather puzzling,” said Willow.

“It seemed perfectly natural at the time,” said
Sarnac.

“That pork butcher was evidently a repulsive
creature,” said Firefly. “Why didn’t they object to
him?”

“Because the importance of the marriage cere¬
monial was so great in those days as to dominate
the entire situation. I knew Crosby quite well; he
was a cunning-faced, oily-mannered humbug with
a bald head, fat red ears, a red complexion and a
paunch. There are no such people in the world
now; you must recall some incredible gross old-
world caricature to imagine him. Nowadays you
would as soon think of coupling the life of a girl

THE DREAM

93

with some gross heavy animal as with such a man.
But that mattered nothing to my father or my
mother. My mother I suspect rather liked the idea
of the physical humiliation of Fanny. She no doubt
had had her own humiliations—for the sexual life
of this old world was a tangle of clumsy ignorances
and secret shames. Except for my mother’s real
hostility to Fanny I remember scarcely a scrap of
any simple natural feeling, let alone any reasonable
thinking, in all that terrible fuss they made. Men
and women in those days were so much more com¬
plex and artificial than they are now; in a muddled
way they were amazingly intricate. You know that
monkeys, even young monkeys, have old and wrin¬
kled faces, and it is equally true that in the Age of
Confusion life was so perplexing and irrational that
while we were still children our minds were already
old and wrinkled. Even to my boyish observation
it was clear that my father was acting the whole
time; he was behaving as he imagined he was ex¬
pected to behave. Never for a moment either when
drunk or sober did he even attempt to find out,
much less to express, what he was feeling naturally
about Fanny. He was afraid to do so. And that
night we were all acting—all of us. We were all
afraid to do anything but act in what we imagined
would be regarded as a virtuous role.”

“But what were you afraid of?” asked Radiant.
“Why did you act?”

“I don’t know. Afraid of blame. Afraid of the
herd. A habit of fear. A habit of inhibition.”

“What was the objection to the real lover?” asked
Firefly. “I don’t understand all this indignation.”

94

THE DREAM

“They guessed rightly enough that he did not
intend to marry Fanny.”

“What sort of a man was he?”

“I never saw him until many years afterwards.
But I will tell you about that when I come to it.”

“Was he—the sort of man one could love?”

“Fanny loved him. She had every reason to do
so. He took care of her. He got her the education
she craved for. He gave her a life full of interest.
I believe he was an honest and delightful man.”

“They stuck to each other?”

“Yes.”

“Then why didn’t he marry her—if it was the
custom?”

“He was married already. Marriage had embit¬
tered him. It embittered many people. He’d been
cheated. He had been married by a woman who
pretended love to impose herself upon him and his
fortunes and he had found her out.”

“Not a very difficult discovery,” said Firefly.

“No.”

“But why couldn’t they divorce?”

“In those days it took two to make a divorce.
She wouldn’t let him loose. She just stuck on and
lived on his loneliness. If he had been poor he
would probably have tried to murder her, but as
it happened he had the knack of success and he
was rich. Rich people could take liberties with
marriage-restrictions that were absolutely impossible
for the poor. And he was, I should guess, sensitive,
affectionate and energetic. Heaven knows what sort
of mind he was in when he came upon Fanny. He
‘picked her up,’ as people used to say casually. The

THE DREAM

95

old world was full of such pitiful adventures in
encounter. Almost always they meant disaster, but
this was an exceptional case. Perhaps it was as
lucky for him that he met her as it was for her that
she met him. Fanny, you know, was one of those
people you have to be honest with; she was acute
and simple; she cut like a clean sharp knife. They
were both in danger and want; the ugliest chances
might have happened to her and he was far gone
on the way to promiscuity and complete sexual
degradation. . . . But I can’t go off on Fanny’s
story. In the end she probably married him. They
were going to marry. In some way the other woman
did at last make it possible.”

“But why don’t you know for certain?”

“Because I was shot before that happened. If
it happened at all.”

§ 6

“No!” cried Sarnac, stopping a question from
Willow by a gesture.

“I shall never tell my story,” said Sarnac, “if you
interrupt with questions. I was telling you of the
storm of misfortunes that wrecked our household
at Cherry Gardens. . . .

“My father was killed within three weeks of
Fanny’s elopement. He was killed upon the road
between Cherry Gardens and Cliffstone. There was
a young gentleman named Wickersham with one
of the new petrol-driven motor-cars that were just
coming into use; he was hurrying home as fast as
possible, he told the coroner, because his brakes were
out of order and he was afraid of an accident. My

96

THE DREAM

father was walking with my uncle along the pave¬
ment, talking. He found the pavement too restricted
for his subject and gestures, and he stepped off
suddenly into the roadway and was struck by the
car from behind and knocked headlong and instantly
killed.

"The effect upon my uncle was very profound.
For some days he was thoughtful and sober and he
missed a race-meeting. He was very helpful over
the details of the funeral.

“ 'You can’t say ’e wasn’t prepared, Marth,’ he
told my mother. ‘You can’t say ’e wasn’t prepared.
Very moment ’e -was killed, ’e ’ad the name ’v’ Provi¬
dence on ’is lips. ’Ed been saying ’ow sorely ’e’d
been tried by this and that.’

“ ' ’E wasn’t the only one,’ said my mother.

“ ' ’E was saying ’e knew it was only to teach ’im
some lesson though he couldn’t rightly say what
the lesson was. ’E was convinced that everything
that ’appened to us, good though it seemed or bad
though it seemed, was surely for the best. . . .’

“My uncle paused dramatically.

“ ‘And then the car ’it ’im,’ said my mother, trying
to picture the scene.

“ ‘Then the car ’it ’im,’ said my uncle.”

CHAPTER THE FOURTH

THE WIDOW SMITH MOVES TO LONDON

§ 1

“In those days,” said Sarnac, “the great majority
of the dead were put into coffins and buried under¬
ground. Some few people were burnt, but that was
an innovation and contrary to the very materialistic
religious ideas of the time. This was a world in
which you must remember people were still repeat¬
ing in perfect good faith a creed which included
The resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.’
Intellectually old Egypt and her dreaming mummies
still ruled the common people of the European
world. The Christian creeds were themselves mum¬
mies from Lower Egypt. As my father said on one
occasion when he was discussing this question of
cremation: Tt might prove a bit orkward at the
Resurrection. Like not ’aving a proper wedding
garment so to speak. . . .

“ ‘Though there’s Sharks,’ said my father, whose
mental transitions were sometimes abrupt. ‘And
them as ’ave been eat by lions. Many of the best
Christian martyrs in their time was eat by lions.
. . . They’d certainly be given bodies. . . .

“ ‘And if one is given a body, why not another?’
said my father, lifting mild and magnified eyes in
enquiry.

“ ‘It’s a difficult question,’ my father decided.

97

98

THE DREAM

“At any rate there was no discussion of cremation
in his case. We had a sort of hearse-coach with a
place for the coffin in front to take him to the ceme¬
tery, and in this vehicle my mother and Prue trav¬
elled also; my elder brother Ernest, who had come
down from London for the occasion, and my uncle
and I walked ahead and waited for it at the ceme¬
tery gates and followed the coffin to the grave-side.
We were all in black clothes, even black gloves, in
spite of the fact that we were wretchedly poor.

“ ‘ ’Twon’t be my last visit to this place this year/
said my uncle despondently, ‘not if Adelaide goes
on as she’s doing . 5

“Ernest was silent. He disliked my uncle and
was brooding over him. From the moment of his
arrival he had shown a deepening objection to my
uncle’s existence.

“ ‘There’s luck they say in funerals,’ said my uncle
presently, striking a brighter note. ‘Fi keep my eye
open I dessay I may get a ’int of somethin’.’

“Ernest remained dour.

“We followed the men carrying the coffin towards
the cemetery chapel in a little procession led by Mr.
Snapes in his clerical robes. He began to read out
words that I realised were beautiful and touching
and that concerned strange and faraway things:
‘I am the Resurrection and the Life. He that
believeth in Me though he were dead yet shall he
live. . . .’

“ ‘I know that my Redeemer liveth and that He
shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. . . .’

“ ‘We brought nothing into this world, and it is
certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave,

THE DREAM 99

and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the Name
of the Lord.’

“Suddenly I forgot the bickerings of my uncle
and brother and was overcome with tenderness and
grief for my father. A rush from my memory of
many clumsy kindlinesses, a realisation of the loss
of his companionship came to me. I recalled the
happiness of many of my Sunday tramps by his side
in spring-time, on golden summer evenings, in win¬
ter when the frost had picked out every twig in the
downland hedgerows. I thought of his endless edi¬
fying discourses about flowers and rabbits and hill¬
sides and distant stars. And he was gone. I should
never hear his voice again. I should never see again
his dear old eyes magnified to an immense wonder
through his spectacles. I should never have a chance
of telling him how I cared for him. And I had never
told him I cared for him. Indeed, I had never real¬
ised I cared for him until now. He was lying stiff
and still and submissive in that coffin, a rejected
man. Life had treated him badly. He had never
had a dog’s chance. My mind leapt forward beyond
my years and I understood what a tissue of petty
humiliations and disappointments and degradations
his life had been. I saw then as clearly as I see now
the immense pity of such a life. Sorrow possessed
me. I wept as I stumbled along after him. I had
great difficulty in preventing myself from weeping
aloud.”

§ 2

“After the funeral my brother Ernest and my
uncle had a violent wrangle about my mother’s

100

THE DREAM

future. Seeing that my Aunt Adelaide was for all
practical purposes done for, my uncle suggested that
he should sell up most of his furniture, ‘bring his
capital’ into the greengrocery business and come
and live with his sister. But my brother declared
that the greengrocery business was a dying concern,
and was for my mother moving into a house in Cliff-
stone when she might let lodgings. Prue would be
‘no end of a ’elp’ in that. At first this was opposed
by my uncle and then he came round to the idea on
condition that he participated in the benefits of
the scheme, but this Ernest opposed, asking rather
rudely what sort of help my uncle supposed he
would be in a lodging-house. ‘Let alone you’re never
out of bed before ten,’ he said, though how he knew
of this fact did not appear.

“Ernest had been living in London, working at
a garage; he drove hired cars by the month or job,
and his respect for the upper classes had somehow
disappeared. The dignity of Sir John ffrench-Cuth-
bertson at secondhand left him cold and scornful.
‘You ain’t going to ’ave my mother to work for you
and wait on you, no’ow,’ he said.

“While this dispute went on my mother with
the assistance of Prue was setting out the cold col¬
lation which in those days was the redeeming feature
of every funeral. There was cold ham and chicken.
My uncle abandoned his position of vantage on my
father’s rag hearthrug and we all sat down to our
exceptional meal.

“For some little time the cold ham and chicken
made a sort of truce between my brother Ernest and
my uncle, but presently my uncle sighed, drank off

THE DREAM

101

his beer and reopened the argument. ‘You know I
think, Marth,’ he said, spearing a potato from the
dish neatly with his fork, ‘you ought to ’ave some
voice in what is going to become of you. Me and
this young man from London’ve been ’aving a bit
of a difference ’bout what you ought to do.’

“I realised abruptly from the expression of my
mother’s white face, a sort of white intentness which
her widow’s cap seemed to emphasise, that she was
quite determined to have not only some voice but a
decisive voice in this matter, but before she could
say anything my brother Ernest had intervened.

“ ‘It’s like this, mother,’ he said, ‘you got to do
something, ’aven’t you?’

“My mother was about to reply when Ernest
snatched a sort of assent from her and proceeded:
‘Well, naturally I ask, what sort of thing can you
do? And as naturally, I answer Lodgings. You
carn’t expect to go on being a greengrocer, because
that ain’t natural for a woman, considering the
weights and coal that ’as to be lifted.’

“ ‘And could be lifted easy, with a man to ’elp
’er,’ said my uncle.

“ ‘If ’e was a man,’ said my brother Ernest with
bitter sarcasm.

“ ‘Meaning-?’ asked my uncle with cold

hauteur.

“ ‘What I say,’ said brother Ernest. ‘No more,
no less. So if you take my advice, mother, what
you’ll do is this. You go down early to-morrow to
Cliffstone to look for a suitable little ’ouse big
enough to ’old lodgers and not so big as to break
your back, and I’ll go and talk to Mr. Bulstrode

102

THE DREAM

about ending up your tenancy ’ere. Then we’ll be
able to see where we are.’

“Again my mother attempted to speak and was
overborne.

“ ‘ ’Fyou think I’m going to be treated as a nonen¬
tity,’ said my uncle, ‘you’re making the biggest
mistake you ever made in your life. See? Now
you listen to me, Marth-’

“ ‘You shut up!’ said my brother. ‘Mother’s my
business first and foremost.’

“ ‘Shut up!’ echoed my uncle. ‘Wot manners!
At a funeral. From a chap not a third my age, a
mere ’azardous empty boy. Shut up! You shut
up yourself, my boy, and listen to those who know
a bit more about life than you do. I’ve smacked
your ’ed before to-day. Not once or twice either.
And I warmed your ’ide when you stole them peaches
—and much good it did you! I oughter’ve took
yer skin off! You and me ’ave never got on much,
and unless you keep a civil tongue in your head we
ain’t going to get on now.’

“ ‘Seeing which,’ said brother Ernest with a dan¬
gerous calmness, ‘the sooner you make yourself
scarce the better for all concerned.’

“ ‘Not to leave my on’y sister’s affairs in the ’ands
of a cub like you.’

“Again my mother essayed to speak, but the angry
voices disregarded her.

“ ‘I tell you you’re going to get out, and if you
can’t get out of your own discretion I warn you I’ll
’ave to ’elp you.’

“ ‘Not when you’re in mourning,’ said my mother.
‘Not wearing your mourning. And besides-’

THE DREAM 103

“But they were both too heated now to attend
to her.

“ ‘You’re pretty big with your talk,’ said my uncle,
‘but don’t you preshume too far on my forbearance.
I’ve ’ad about enough of this.’

“ ‘So’ve I,’ said my brother Ernest and stood up.

“My uncle stood up too and they glared at one
another.

“ ‘That’s the door,’ said my brother darkly.

“My uncle walked back to his wonted place on
the hearthrug. ‘Now don’t let’s ’ave any quarrelling
on a day like this,’ he said. ‘If you ’aven’t any con¬
sideration for your mother you might at least think
of ’im who has passed beyond. My objec’ ’ere is
simply to try n’range things so’s be best for all. And
what I say is this, the ideer of your mother going
into a lodging-’ouse alone, without a man’s ’elp, is
ridiculous, perfectly ridiculous, and only a first-class
inconsiderate young fool-’

“My brother Ernest went and stood close to my
uncle. ‘You’ve said enough,’ he remarked. ‘This
affair’s between me and my mother and your motto
is Get Out. See?’

“Again my mother had something to say and again
she was silenced. “ ‘This is man’s work, mother,’
said Ernest. ‘Are you going to shift it, uncle?’

“My uncle faced up to this threat of Ernest. ‘I’ve
a juty to my sister-’

“And then I regret to say my brother laid hands
on him. He took him by the collar and by the wrist
and for a moment the two black-clad figures swayed.

“ ‘Lea’ go my coat,’ said my uncle. ‘Lea’ go my
coat collar.’

104

THE DREAM

“But a thirst for violence had taken possession
of Ernest. My mother and Prue and I stood aghast.

“ ‘Ernie!’ cried my mother, ‘You forget yourself!'

“ ’Sail right, mother,’ said Ernie, and whirled my
uncle violently from the hearthrug to the bottom
of the staircase. Then he shifted his grip from my
uncle’s wrist to the seat of his tight black trousers
and partly lifted and partly impelled him up the
staircase. My uncle’s arms waved wildly as if he
clutched at his lost dignity.

“‘John!’ cried my mother. ‘’Ere’s your ’at!’

“I had a glimpse of my uncle’s eye as he vanished
up the staircase. He seemed to be looking for his
hat. But he was now offering no serious opposition
to my brother Ernest’s handling of him.

“ ‘Give it ’im, ’Arry,’ said my mother. ‘And
there’s ’is gloves too.’

“I took the black hat and the black gloves and
followed the struggle upstairs. Astonished and un¬
resisting, my uncle was propelled through the front
door into the street and stood there panting and
regarding my brother. His collar was torn from its
stud and his black tie disarranged. Ernest was
breathing heavily. ‘Now you be orf and mind your
own business,’ said Ernie.

“Ernie turned with a start as I pushed past him.
‘ ’Ere’s your ’at and gloves, uncle,’ I said, handing
them to him. He took them mechanically, his eyes
still fixed on Ernest.

“ ‘And you’re the boy I trained to be ’onest,’
said my uncle to my brother Ernest, very bitterly.
‘Leastways I tried to. You’re the young worm I

THE DREAM 105

fattened up at my gardens and showed such kind¬
ness to! Gratitood!’

“He regarded the hat in his hand for a moment
as though it was some strange object, and then by
a happy inspiration put it on his head.

“ ‘God ’elp your poor mother,’ said my Uncle John
Julip. ‘God ’elp ’er.’

“He had nothing more to say. He looked up the
street and down and then turned as by a sort of
necessity in the direction of the Wellington public-
house. And in this manner was my Uncle John
Julip on the day of my father’s funeral cast forth
into the streets of Cherry Gardens, a prospective
widower and a most pathetic and unhappy little
man. That dingy little black figure in retreat still
haunts my memory. Even from the back he looked
amazed. Never did a man who has not been kicked
look so like a man who has been. I never saw him
again. I have no doubt that he carried his sorrows
down to the Wellington and got himself thoroughly
drunk, and I have as little doubt that he missed my
father dreadfully all the time he was doing so.

“My brother Ernest returned thoughtfully to the
kitchen. He was already a little abashed at his own
violence. I followed him respectfully.

“ ‘You didn’t ought t’ave done that,’ said my
mother.

“ ‘What right ’as ’e to plant ’imself on you to be
kept and waited on?’

“ ‘ ’E wouldn’t ’ave planted ’imself on me,’ my
mother replied. ‘You get ’eated, Ernie, same as you
used to do, and you won’t listen to anything.’

“ ‘I never did fancy uncle,’ said Ernie.

106

THE DREAM

“ ‘When you get ’eated, Ernie, you seem to forget
everything/ said my mother. ‘You might’ve remem¬
bered ’e was my brother.’

“ ‘Fine brother!’ said Ernie. ‘Why!—who started
all that stealing? Who led poor father to drink
and bet?’

“ ‘All the same/ said my mother, ‘you ’adn’t no
right to ’andle ’im as you did. And your poor father
’ardly cold in ’is grave!’ She wept. She produced
a black-bordered handkerchief and mopped her eyes.
‘I did ’ope your poor father would ’ave a nice funeral
—all the trouble and expense—and now you’ve
spoilt it. I’ll never be able to look back on this day
with pleasure, not if I live to be a ’undred years. I’ll
always remember ’ow you spoilt your own father’s
funeral—turning on your uncle like this.’

“Ernest had no answer for her reproaches. ‘He
shouldn’t ’ve argued and said what he did,’ he
objected.

“ ‘And all so unnecessary! All along I’ve been
trying to tell you you needn’t worry about me. I
don’t want no lodging-’ouse in Cliffston e—with your
uncle or without your uncle. I wrote to Matilda
Good a week come Tuesday and settled everything
with ’er—everything. It’s settled.’

“ ‘What d’you mean?’ asked Ernest.

“ ‘Why, that ’ouse of hers in Pimlico. She’s been
wanting trusty ’elp for a long time, what with her
varicose veins up and downstairs and one thing
’nother, and directly she got my letter about your
poor dear father she wrote orf to me. “You need
never want a ’ome,” she says, “so long as I got a
lodger. You and Prue are welcome,” she says, “wel-

THE DREAM

107

come ’elp, and the boy can easy find work up ’ere—
much easier than ’e can in Cliffstone.” All the time
you was planning lodging-’ouses and things for me
I was trying to tell you-’

“ ‘You mean it’s settled?’

“ ‘It’s settled.’

“ ‘And what you going to do with your bits of
furniture ’ere?’

“ ‘Sell some and take some. . . .’

“ ‘It’s feasible/ said Ernest after reflection.

“And so we needn’t reely ’ave ’ad that—bit of a’
argument?’ said Ernest after a pause. ‘Not me and
uncle?’

“ ‘Not on my account you needn’t,’ said my
mother.

“ ‘Well—we ’ad it,’ said Ernest after another pause
and without any visible signs of regret.”

§ 3

“If my dream was a dream,” said Sarnac, “it
was a most circumstantial dream. I could tell you
a hundred details of our journey to London and how
we disposed of the poor belongings that had fur¬
nished our home in Cherry Gardens. Every detail
would expose some odd and illuminating difference
between the ideas of those ancient days and our own
ideas. Brother Ernest was helpful, masterful and
irascible. He got a week’s holiday from his employer
to help mother to settle up things, and among other
things that were settled up I believe my mother
persuaded him and my uncle to ‘shake hands,’ but I
do not know the particulars of that great scene, I did

108

THE DREAM

not see it, it was merely mentioned in my hearing
during the train journey to London. I would like to
tell you also of the man who came round to buy most
of our furniture, including that red and black sofa
I described to you, and how he and my brother had
a loud and heated argument about some damage to
one of its legs, and how Mr. Crosby produced a bill,
that my mother understood he had forgiven us on
account of Fanny long ago. There was also some
point about something called ‘tenant’s fixtures’ that
led my brother and the landlord, Mr. Bulstrode, to
the verge of violence. And Mr. Bulstrode, the land¬
lord, brought accusations of damage done to the
fabric of his house that were false, and he made
extravagant claims for compensation based thereon
and had to be rebutted with warmth. There was
also trouble over carting a parcel of our goods to the
railway station, and when we got to the terminus
of Victoria in London it was necessary, I gathered,
that Ernest should offer to fight a railway porter
—you have read of railway porters?—before we
received proper attention.

“But I cannot tell you all these curious and typical
incidents now because at that rate I should never
finish my story before our holidays are over. I must
go on now to tell you of this London, this great city,
the greatest city it was in the world in those days,
to which we had transferred our fates. All the rest
of my story, except for nearly two years and a half
I spent in the training camp and in France and
Germany during the First World War, is set in the
scenery of London. You know already what a vast
congestion of human beings London was; you know

THE DREAM

109

that within a radius of fifteen miles a population
of seven and a half million people were gathered
together, people born out of due time into a world
unready for them and born mostly through the sheer
ignorance of their procreators, gathered together
into an area of not very attractive clay country by
an urgent need to earn a living, and you know the
terrible fate that at last overwhelmed this sinfully
crowded accumulation; you have read of west-end
and slums, and you have seen the cinema pictures
of those days showing crowded streets, crowds gap¬
ing at this queer ceremony or that, a vast traffic of
clumsy automobiles and distressed horses in narrow
unsuitable streets, and I suppose your general im¬
pression is a nightmare of multitudes, a suffocating
realisation of jostling discomfort and uncleanness
and of an unendurable strain on eye and ear and
attention. The history we learn in our childhood
enforces that lesson.

“But though the facts are just as we are taught
they were, I do not recall anything like the distress
at London you would suppose me to have felt, and
I do remember vividly the sense of adventure, the
intellectual excitement and the discovery of beauty
I experienced in going there. You must remember
that in this strange dream of mine I had forgotten
all our present standards; I accepted squalor and
confusion as being in the nature of things, and the
aspects of this city’s greatness, the wonder of this
limitless place and a certain changing and evanes¬
cent beauty, rise out of a sea of struggle and limita¬
tion as forgetfully as a silver birch rises out of the
swamp that bears it.

110

THE DREAM

“The part of London in which we took up our
abode was called Pimlico. It bordered upon the
river, and once there had been a wharf there to
which ships came across the Atlantic from America.
This word Pimlico had come with other trade in
these ships; in my time it was the last word left
alive of the language of the Algonquin Red Indians,
who had otherwise altogether vanished from the
earth. The Pimlico wharf had gone, the American
trade was forgotten, and Pimlico was now a great
wilderness of streets of dingy grey houses in which
people lived and let lodgings. These houses had
never been designed for the occupation of lodgers;
they were faced with a lime-plaster called stucco
which made a sort of pretence of being stone ; each
one had a sunken underground floor originally in¬
tended for servants, a door with a portico and several
floors above which were reached by a staircase.
Beside each portico was a railed pit that admitted
light to the front underground room. As you walked
along these Pimlico streets these porticos receded
in long perspectives and each portico of that endless
series represented ten or a dozen misdirected, incom¬
plete and rather unclean inhabitants, infected men¬
tally and morally. Over the grey and dingy archi¬
tecture rested a mist or a fog, rarely was there a
precious outbreak of sunlight; here and there down
the vista a grocer’s boy or a greengrocer’s boy or a
fish hawker would be handing in food over the rail¬
ings to the subterranean members of a household,
or a cat (there was a multitude of cats) would be
peeping out of the railings alert for the danger of
a passing dog. There would be a few pedestrians,

THE DREAM

111

a passing cab or so, and perhaps in the morning
a dust-cart collecting refuse filth—set out for the
winds to play with in boxes and tin receptacles at
the pavement edge—or a man in a uniform cleaning
the streets with a hose. It seems to you that it must
have been the most depressing of spectacles. It
wasn’t, though I doubt if I can make clear to you
that it wasn’t. I know I went about Pimlico think¬
ing it rather a fine place and endlessly interesting.
I assure you that in the early morning and by my
poor standards it had a sort of grey spaciousness
and dignity. But afterwards I found the thing
far better done, that London architectural aquatint,
in Belgravia and round about Regent’s Park.

“I must admit that I tended to drift out of those
roads and squares of lodging-houses either into the
streets where there were shops and street-cars or
southward to the Embankment along the Thames.
It was the shops and glares that drew me first as
the lights began to fail and, strange as it may seem
to you, my memories of such times are rich with
beauty. We feeble children of that swarming age
had, I think, an almost morbid gregariousness; we
found a subtle pleasure and reassurance in crowds
and a real disagreeableness in being alone; and my
impressions of London’s strange interest and charm
are, I confess, very often crowded impressions of a
kind this world no longer produces, or impressions
to which a crowded foreground or background was
essential. But they were beautiful.

“For example there was a great railway station,
a terminus, within perhaps half a mile of us. There
was a great disorderly yard in front of the station

112

THE DREAM

in which hackney automobiles and omnibuses assem¬
bled and departed and arrived. In the late twilight
of an autumn day this yard was a mass of shifting
black shadows and gleams and lamps, across which
streamed an incessant succession of bobbing black
heads, people on foot hurrying to catch the trains:
as they flitted by the lights one saw their faces gleam
and vanish again. Above this foreground rose the
huge brown-grey shapes of the station buildings
and the facade of a big hotel, reflecting the flares
below and pierced here and there by a lit window;
then very sharply came the sky-line and a sky still
blue and luminous, tranquil and aloof. And the
innumerable sounds of people and vehicles wove into
a deep, wonderful and continually varying drone.
Even to my boyish mind there was an irrational
conviction of unity and purpose in this spectacle.

“The streets where there were shops were also
very wonderful and lovely to me directly the too-
lucid and expository daylight began to fade. The
variously coloured lights in the shop-windows which
displayed a great diversity of goods for sale splashed
the most extraordinary reflections upon the pave¬
ments and roadway, and these were particularly
gem-like if there had been rain or a mist to wet
the reflecting surfaces. One of these streets—it was
called Lupus Street, though why it had the name
of an abominable skin disease that has long since
vanished from the earth I cannot imagine—was close
to our new home and I still remember it as full of
romantic effectiveness. By daylight it was an ex¬
ceedingly sordid street, and late at night empty and
echoing, but in the magic hours of London it was a

THE DREAM

113

bed of black and luminous flowers, the abounding
people became black imps and through it wallowed
the great shining omnibuses, the ships of the street,
filled with light and reflecting lights.

“There were endless beauties along the river bank.
The river was a tidal one held in control by a stone
embankment, and the roadway along the embank¬
ment was planted at the footway edge with plane
trees and lit by large electric lights on tall standards.
These planes were among the few trees that could
flourish in the murky London air, but they were un¬
suitable trees to have in a crowded city because
they gave off minute specules that irritated people’s
throats. That, however, I did not know; what I did
know was that the shadows of the leaves on the
pavements thrown by the electric glares made the
most beautiful patterings I had ever seen. I would
walk along on a warm night rejoicing in them, more
particularly if now and then a light breeze set them
dancing and quivering.

“One could walk from Pimlico along this Thames
Embankment for some miles towards the east. One
passed little black jetties with dangling oil lamps;
there was a traffic of barges and steamers on the
river altogether mysterious and romantic to me;
the frontages of the houses varied incessantly, and
ever and again were cleft by crowded roadways
that brought a shining and twinkling traffic up to
the bridges. Across the river was a coming and
going of trains along a railway viaduct; it contrib¬
uted a restless motif of clanks and concussion to
the general drone of London, and the engines sent
puffs of firelit steam and sudden furnace-glows into

114

THE DREAM

the night. One came along this Embankment to
the great buildings at Westminster, by daylight a
pile of imitation Gothic dominated by a tall clock-
tower with an illuminated dial, a pile which assumed
a blue dignity with the twilight and became a noble
portent standing at attention, a forest of spears,
in the night. This was the Parliament House, and
in its chambers a formal King, an ignoble nobility
and a fraudulently elected gathering of lawyers,
financiers and adventurers took upon themselves,
amidst the general mental obscurity of those days,
a semblance of wisdom and empire. As one went
on beyond Westminster along the Embankment
came great grey-brown palaces and houses set behind
green gardens, a railway bridge and then two huge
hotels, standing high and far back, bulging with
lit windows; there was some sort of pit or waste
beneath them, I forget what, very black, so that
at once they loomed over one and seemed magically
remote. There was an Egyptian obelisk here, for
all the European capitals of my time, being as honest
as magpies and as original as monkeys, had adorned
themselves with obelisks stolen from Egypt. And
farther along was the best and noblest building in
London, St. Paul’s Cathedral; it was invisible by
night, but it was exceedingly serene and beautiful
on a clear, blue, windy day. And some of the
bridges were very lovely with gracious arches of
smutty grey stone, though some were so clumsy that
only night could redeem them.

“As I talk I remember,” said Sarnac. “Before
employment robbed me of my days I pushed my
boyish explorations far and wide, wandering all

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115

day and often going without any meal, or, if I was
in pocket, getting a bun and a glass of milk in some
small shop for a couple of pennies. The shop-
windows of London were an unending marvel to
me; and they would be to you too if you could
remember them as I do; there must have been
hundreds of miles of them, possibly thousands of
miles. In the poorer parts they were chiefly food-
shops and cheap clothing shops and the like, and one
could exhaust their interest, but there were thor¬
oughfares like Regent Street and Piccadilly and
narrow Bond Street and Oxford Street crammed
with all the furnishings of the life of the lucky
minority, the people who could spend freely. You
will find it difficult to imagine how important a
matter the mere buying of things was in the lives
of those people. In their houses there was a vast
congestion of objects neither ornamental nor useful;
purchases in fact; and the women spent large por¬
tions of every week-day in buying things, clothes,
table-litter, floor-litter, wall-litter. They had no
work; they were too ignorant to be interested in any
real thing; they had nothing else to do. That was
the world’s reward, the substance of success—pur¬
chases. Through them you realised your well-being.
As a shabby half-grown boy I pushed my way among
these spenders, crowds of women dressed, wrapped
up rather, in layer after layer of purchases, scented,
painted. Most of them were painted to suggest a
health-flushed face, the nose powdered a leprous
white.

“There is one thing to be said for the old fashion
of abundant clothing; in that crowded jostling

116 THE DREAM

world it saved people from actually touching each
other.

“I would push through these streets eastward to
less prosperous crowds in Oxford Street and to a
different multitude in Holborn. As you went east¬
ward the influence of women diminished and that
of young men increased. Cheapside gave you all
the material for building up a twentieth-century
young man from the nude. In the shop-windows
he was disarticulated and priced: hat five and six¬
pence, trousers eighteen shillings, tie one and six;
cigarettes tenpence an ounce; newspaper a half¬
penny, cheap novel sevenpence; on the pavement
outside there he was put together and complete and
the cigarette burning, under the impression that he
was a unique immortal creature and that the ideas
in his head were altogether his own. And beyond
Cheapside there was Clerkenwell with curious little
shops that sold scarcely anything but old keys or
the parts of broken-up watches or the like detached
objects. Then there were great food markets at
Leadenhall Street and Smithfield and Covent
Garden, incredible accumulations of raw stuff. At
Covent Garden they sold fruits and flowers that we
should think poor and undeveloped, but which
everyone in those days regarded as beautiful and
delicious. And in Caledonian Market were innu¬
merable barrows where people actually bought and
took away every sort of broken and second-hand
rubbish, broken ornaments, decaying books with
torn pages, second-hand clothing—a wonderland of
litter for any boy with curiosity in his blood. . . .

“But I could go on talking endlessly about this

THE DREAM

117

old London of mine and you want me to get on
with my story. I have tried to give you something
of its endless, incessant, multitudinous glittering
quality and the way in which it yielded a thousand
strange and lovely effects to its changing lights and
atmosphere. I found even its fogs, those dreaded
fogs of which the books tell, romantic. But then
I was a boy at the adventurous age. The fog was
often very thick in Pimlico. It was normally a soft
creamy obscurity that turned even lights close at
hand into luminous blurs. People came out of
nothingness within six yards of you, were riddles
and silhouettes before they became real. One could
go out and lose oneself within ten minutes of home
and perhaps pick up with a distressed automobile
driver and walk by his headlights, signalling to him
where the pavement ended. That was one sort of
fog, the dry fog. But there were many sorts. There
was a sort of yellow darkness, like blackened bronze,
that hovered about you and did not embrace you and
left a clear nearer world of deep browns and blacks.
And there was an unclean wet mist that presently
turned to drizzle and made every surface a mirror.”

“And there was daylight,” said Willow, “some¬
times surely there was daylight.”

“Yes,” Sarnac reflected; “there was daylight. At
times. And sometimes there was quite a kindly
and redeeming sunshine in London. In the spring,
in early summer or in October. It did not blaze,
but it filled the air with a mild warmth, and turned
the surfaces it lit not indeed to gold but to amber
and topaz. And there were even hot days in Lon¬
don with skies of deep blue above, but they were

118 THE DREAM

rare. And sometimes there was daylight without
the sun. . . .

“Yes,” said Sarnac and paused. “At times there
was a daylight that stripped London bare, showed
its grime, showed its real ineffectiveness, showed
the pitiful poverty of intention in its buildings,
showed the many coloured billstickers’ hoardings for
the crude and leprous things they were, brought out
the shabbiness of unhealthy bodies and misfitting
garments. . . .

“Those were terrible, veracious, unhappy days.
When London no longer fascinated but wearied and
offended, when even to an uninstructed boy there
came some intimation of the long distressful journey
that our race had still to travel before it attained
even to such peace and health and wisdom as it
has to-day.”

§ 4

Sarnac stopped short in his talk and rose with
something between a laugh and a sigh. He stood
facing westward and Sunray stood beside him.

“This story will go on for ever if I digress like
this. See! the sun will be behind that ridge in
another ten minutes. I cannot finish this evening,
because most of the story part still remains to be
told.”

“There are roast fowls with sweet corn and chest¬
nuts,” said Firefly. “Trout and various fruits.”

“And some of that golden wine?” said Radiant.

“Some of that golden wine.”

Sunray, who had been very still and intent, awoke.

THE DREAM 119

“Sarnac dear,” she said, slipping her arm through
his. “What became of Uncle John Julip?”

Sarnac reflected. “I forget,” he said.

“Aunt Adelaide Julip died?” asked Willow.

“She died quite soon after we left Cherry Gardens.
My uncle wrote, I remember, and I remember my
mother reading the letter at breakfast like a proc¬
lamation and saying, ‘Seems if she was reely ill
after all.’ If she had not been ill then surely she
had carried malingering to the last extremity. But
I forget any particulars about my uncle’s departure
from this world. He probably outlived my mother,
and after her death the news of his end might easily
have escaped me.”

“You have had the most wonderful dream in
the world, Sarnac,” said Starlight, “and I want to
hear the whole story and not interrupt, but I am
sorry not to hear more of your Uncle John Julip.”

“He was such a perfect little horror,” said
Firefly. . . .

Until the knife-edge of the hills cut into the mol¬
ten globe of the sun, the holiday-makers lingered
watching the shadows in their last rush up to the
mountain crests, and then, still talking of this par¬
ticular and that in Sarnac’s story, the six made their
way down to the guest-house and supper.

“Sarnac was shot,” said Radiant. “He hasn’t
even begun to get shot yet. There is no end of
story still to come.”

“Sarnac,” asked Firefly, “you weren’t killed in
the Great War, were you? Suddenly? In some
inconsequent sort of way?”

“Not a bit of it,” said Sarnac. “I am really

120

THE DREAM

beginning to be shot in this story though Radiant
does not perceive it. But I must tell my story in
my own fashion.”

At supper what was going on was explained to
the master of the guest-house. Like so many of
these guest-house-keepers he was a jolly, convivial,
simple soul, and he was amused and curious at Sar-
nac’s alleged experience. He laughed at the im¬
patience of the others; he said they were like chil¬
dren in a Children’s Garden, agog for their go-to-bed
fairy-tale. After they had had coffee they went out
for a time to see the moolight mingle with the ruddy
afterglow above the peaks; and then the guest-
master led the w T ay in, made up a blazing pinewood
fire and threw cushions before it, set out an after-
dinner wine, put out the lights and prepared for a
good night’s story-telling.

Sarnac remained thoughtful, looking into the
flames until Sunray set him off again by whispering:
“Pimlico?”

§ 5

“I will tell you as briefly as I can of the household
in Pimlico where we joined forces with my mother’s
old friend, Matilda Good,” said Sarnac; “but I con¬
fess it is hard to be reasonably brief when one’s
mind is fuller of curious details than this fire is of
sparks.”

“That’s excellent!” said the master of the guest¬
house. “That’s a perfect story-teller’s touch!” and
looked brightly for Sarnac to continue.

“But we are all beginning to believe that he has
been there,” whispered Radiant, laying a restraining

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121

hand on the guest-master’s knee. “And he”—
Radiant spoke behind his hand—“he believes it
altogether.”

“Not really?” whispered the guest-master. He
seemed desirous of asking difficult questions and
then subsided into an attention that was at first a
little constrained and presently quite involuntary.

“These houses in Pimlico were part of an enor¬
mous proliferation of houses that occurred between
a hundred years and seventy years before the Great
War. There was a great amount of unintelligent
building enterprise in those decades in London, and
at the building, as I have already told you, I think,
was done on the supposition that there was an end¬
less supply of fairly rich families capable of occupy¬
ing a big house and employing three or four domestic
servants. There were underground kitchens and
servants’ rooms, there was a dining-room and mas¬
ter’s study at the ground level, there was a ‘drawing-
room floor’ above, two rooms convertible into one
by a device known as folding doors, and above this
were bedrooms on a scale of diminishing importance
until one came to attics without fire-places in which
the servants were to sleep. In large areas and par¬
ticularly in Pimlico, these fairly rich families of the
builder’s imagination, with servile domestics all
complete, never appeared to claim the homes pre¬
pared for them, and from the first, poorer people,
for whom of course no one had troubled to plan
houses, adapted these porticoed plaster mansions
to their own narrower needs. My mother’s friend,
Matilda Good, was a quite typical Pimlico house¬
holder. She had been the trusted servant of a rich

122

THE DREAM

old lady in Cliffstone who had died and left her two
or three hundred pounds of money-”

The master of the guest-house was endlessly per¬
plexed and made an interrogative noise.

“Private property,” said Radiant very rapidly.
“Power of bequest. Two thousand years ago.
Made a Will, you know. Go on, Sarnac.”

“With that and her savings,” said Sarnac, “she
was able to become tenant of one of these Pimlico
houses and to furnish it with a sort of shabby gen¬
tility. She lived herself in the basement below and
in the attic above, and all the rest of the house she
had hoped to let in pieces, floor by floor or room
by room, to rich or at least prosperous old ladies,
and to busy herself in tending them and supplying
their needs and extracting a profit and living out of
them, running up and down her staircase as an ant
runs up and dowm a rose stem tending its aphides.
But old ladies of any prosperity did not come into
Pimlico. It was low and foggy, the children of its
poorer streets were rough and disrespectful, and it
was close to the river embankment over which rich,
useless old ladies naturally expected to be thrown.
So Matilda Good had to console herself with less
succulent and manageable lodgers.

“I remember Matilda Good giving us an account
of those she had as we sat in her front downstairs
room having a kind of tea supper on the evening
of our arrival. Ernest had declined refreshment
and departed, his task as travel conductor done, but
there were my mother and Prue and myself, all in
dingy black and all a little stiff and strange, thawing
slowly to tea and hot buttered toast with a poached

THE DREAM 123

egg each, our mouths very full and our eyes and
ears very attentive to Matilda Good.

“She appeared quite a grand lady to me that
night. She was much larger than any lady I had
hitherto been accustomed to; she had a breadth
and variety of contour like scenery rather than a
human being; the thought of her veins being vari¬
cose, indeed of all her anatomy being varicose and
fantastic, seemed a right and proper one. She was
dressed in black with outbreaks of soiled lace, a
large gold-rimmed brooch fastened her dress at the
neck and she had a gold chain about her, and on her
head was what was called a ‘cap/ an affair like the
lower shell of an oyster inverted, made of layers
of dingy lace and adorned with a black velvet bow
and a gold buckle. Her face had the same land¬
scape unanatomical quality as her body; she had
a considerable moustache, an overhung slightly mis¬
chievous mouth and two different large dark-grey
eyes with a slightly vertical cast in them and very
marked eyelashes. She sat sideways. One eye
looked at you rather sidelong, the other seemed to
watch something over your head. She spoke in a
whisper which passed very easily into wheezy, not
unkindly laughter.

“ ‘You’ll get no end of exercise on these stairs,
my dear,’ she said to sister Prue, ‘no end of exercise.
There’s times when I’m going up to bed when I
start counting ’em, just to make sure that they aren’t
taking in lodgers like the rest of us. There’s no
doubt this ’ouse will strengthen your legs, my dear.
Mustn’t get ’em too big and strong for the rest of
you. But you can easy manage that by carrying

124

THE DREAM

something, carrying something every time you go
up or down. Ugh—ugh. That’ll equalise you.
There’s always something to carry, boots it is, hot
water it is, a scuttle of coals or a parcel.’

“ T expect it’s a busy ’ouse,’ said my mother,
eating her buttered toast like a lady.

“ ‘It’s a toilsome ’ouse,’ said Matilda Good. T
don’t want to deceive you, Martha; it’s a toilsome
’ouse.

“ ‘But it’s a ’ouse that keeps full/ said Matilda
Good, challenging me with one eye and ignoring
me with the other. ‘Full I am now, and full I’ve
been since last Michaelmas, full right up; two
permanents I’ve ’ad three years on end and those
my best floors. I’ve something to be thankful for,
all things considered, and now I got ’elp of a sort
that won’t slide downstairs on a tea tray or lick the
ground-floor’s sugar lump by lump knowing the
lumps was counted and never thinking that wetness
tells, the slut! we’ll get on swimmingly. The sluts
I’ve ’ad, Martha! These board-schools turn them
out a ’orror to God and a danger to men. I can’t
tell you. It’s a comfort to set eyes on any girl as
I can see at once ’as been brought up to take a
pride in ’erself. ’Ave a little of that watercress with
your toast, my dear. It’ll do that complexion of
yours good.’

“My sister Prue reddened and took some water¬
cress.

“ ‘The drawing-room floor,’ said Matilda Good,
‘is a lady. It isn’t often you keep a lady three years,
what with the things they know and the things they
fancy they know, but I’ve kept her. She’s a real

THE DREAM

125

lady—born. Bumpus ’er name is—Miss Beatrice
Bumpus. I don’t know whether you’ll like her,
Martha, when you set eyes on her, but she’s got
to be studied. She’s a particular sort of Warwick¬
shire Bumpus that hunts. She’ll ask you if you
want the vote, Martha, directly she sees you’re a
fresh face. It isn’t a vote or any old vote she asks
you to want, it’s the vote.’ The whispering voice
grew thicker and richer and a persuasive smile spread
far and wide over the face. Tf it’s all the same to
you, Martha, you better say you do.’

“My mother was sipping her fourth cup of tea.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, ‘as I altogether ’old with
this vote.’

“Matilda Good’s great red hands, which had been
lying apparently detached in her lap, produced short
arms and lace cuffs and waved about in the air,
waving my mother’s objections away. ‘ ’Old with
it on the drawing-room floor,’ wheezed Matilda.
‘ ’Old with it on the drawing-room floor.’

“ ‘But if she arsts questions?’

“ ‘She won’t wait to have them answered. It
won’t be difficult, Martha. I wouldn’t put you into
a position of difficulty, not if I could ’elp it. You
just got to ’old with ’er quietly and she’ll do the rest.’

“ ‘Mother,’ said Prue, who was still too overawed
by Matilda Good to address her directly. ‘Mother,
what is this here vote?’

“ ‘Vote for Parliament, my dear,’ said Matilda
Good.

“ ‘When shall we get it?’ asked my mother.

“ ‘You won’t get it,’ said Matilda Good.

THE DREAM

126

“ ‘But if we did, what should we have to do with
it, like?’

“ ‘ Nothing ,’ said Matilda Good with bottomless
contempt. ‘All the same it’s a great movement,
Martha, and don’t you forget it. And Miss Bumpus
she works night and day, Martha, gets ’it about
by policemen, and once she was actually in prison
a night, getting you and me the vote.’

“ ‘Well, it shows a kind nature,’ said my mother.

“ ‘My ground-floor’s a gentleman. The worst
of ’im is the books there are to dust, books and
books. Not that ’e ever reads ’em much. . . .
Very likely you’ll ’ear ’im soon playing his pianola.
You can ’ear it down ’ere almost as if you were
inside it. Mr. Plaice, ’e’s an Oxford gentleman and
he works at a firm of publishers, Burrows and
Graves, they’re called; a very ’igh-class firm I’m told
—don’t go in for advertisements or anything vulgar.
He’s got photographs of Greek and Latin statues
and ruins round above his bookshelves and shields
with College arms. Naked some of the statues are,
but for all that none of them are anything but quite
nice and genteel, quite genteel. You can see at once
he’s a University gentleman. And photographs of
Switzerland he’s got. He goes up mountains in
Switzerland and speaks the language. He’s a
smoker; sets with a pipe writing or reading evening
after evening and marking things with his pencil.
Manuscripts he reads and proofs. Pipes he has with
a pipe for every day in the week, and a smoker’s
outfit all made with bee-utiful stone, serpentine they
call it, sort of bloodshot green it is; tobacco-jar
and a pot for feathers to clean his pipes, little places

THE DREAM

127

for each day’s pipe, everything all of stone; it’s a
regular monument. And when you’re dusting it—
remember if you drop this here serpentine it breaks
like earthenware. Most of the maids I’ve ’ad ’ave
’ad a chip at that tobacco graveyard of ’is. And

mind you-’ Matilda Good leant forward and

held out her hand to arrest any wandering of my
mother’s attention. e, E don’t ’old with Votes for
Women! See?’

“ ‘One’s got to be careful,’ said my mother.

“ ‘One has. He’s got one or two little whims,
has Mr. Plaice, but if you mind about them he
don’t give you much trouble. One of ’is whims is
to pretend to ’ave a bath every morning. Every
morning he ’as a shallow tin bath put out in his
room and a can of cold water and a sponge, and
every morning he pretends to splash about in it
something fearful and makes a noise like a grampus
singing a hymn—calls it ’is Tub, he does; though
it’s a lot more like a canary’s saucer. Says he must
have it as cold as possible even if there’s ice on it.
Well-’

“Matilda Good performed a sort of landslide over
the arm of her chair, her head nodded, and the
whisper became more confidential. ‘He doesn’t,’
wheezed Matilda Good.

“ ‘You mean he doesn’t get into the bath?’

“ ‘Not-tit,’ said Matilda Good. ‘You can see
w r hen he’s really been in by his wet footmarks on
the floor. Not ’arf the time does he have that bath.
Per’aps ’e used to have it when he was a young
man at College. I wonder. But it’s always got
to be put out and the can always got to be lugged

128

THE DREAM

up and poured out and poured away again, and
nobody’s ever to ask if he’d like the chill taken off.
Not the sort of thing you ask a University gentle¬
man. No. All the same,’ said Matilda Good, ‘all
the same I’ve caught ’im pouring his hand and
shaving water into that water-splash in the winter,
after he’d been going dirty for a week. But have
a can of warm? Have the chill taken off his water?
Not Tim! It’s curious, ain’t it? But that’s one
of his whims.

“ ‘I sometimes think,’ said Matilda Good still
more extravagantly confidential, ‘that perhaps he
climbs all those mountains in Switzerland same way
as he takes his bath. . . .’

“She rolled back large portions of her person into
a less symmetrical attitude. ‘This Mr. Plaice you
must know,’ she said, ‘has a voice between a clergy¬
man’s and a schoolmaster’s, sort of hard and su¬
perior, and when you say anything to him he’s apt
to make a noise, “Arrr . . . Arrr . . . Arrr,” a sort
of slow neighing it is, as though he doesn’t think
much of you but doesn’t want to blame you for
that and anyhow can’t attend to you properly.
You mustn’t let it annoy you. It’s the way he’s
been brought up. And he has a habit of using long
condescending sort of words to you. And calling
you insulting names. He’ll think nothing of calling
you “My worthy Abigail,” or “Come in, my rosy-
fingered Aurora,” when you knock in the morning.
Just as though a girl could keep ’er ’ands pink and
clean with all these fires to light! He’ll ask of
me ‘How’s the Good Matilda? How’s honest Ma¬
tilda Good to-day?”—sort of fiddling about with

THE DREAM

129

your name. Of course he don’t mean to be rude;
it’s just his idea of being pleasant and humorous,
and making you feel you’re being made fun of in
a gentle sort of way instead of being terrible like
he might be, and—seeing he’s good pay and very
little trouble, Martha—it’s no good getting offended
with him. All the same I can’t help thinking at
times of how he’d get on if I answered ’im back,
and which of us two would be left alive if we had
a fair match of it, making fun of one another. The
things—the things I could say! But that,’ said
Matilda Good, breaking into an ingratiating smile
of extraordinary extent and rolling one eye at me
—‘is just a dream. It isn’t the sort of dream to
indulge in in this ’ouse. I’ve rehearsed it a bit, I
admit. Says ’e—but never mind what ’e says or
what I says back to him. . . . Ugh! Ugh! . . .
He’s good pay and regular, my dear; he ain’t likely
to lose his job and he ain’t likely ever to get another,
and in this Vale anyhow we got to put up with ’is
whims. And-’

“Matilda Good spoke as one who confesses to
a weakness. ‘His pianola cheers me up at times.
I will say that for ’im. It’s almost the only noise
one hears from him. Except when he takes off his
boots.

“ ‘Well, up above my drawing-room at present
is my second floor front, the Reverend Moggeridge
and his good lady. They been here five months
now and they seem like taking root.’

“ ‘Not a clergyman?’ said my mother respectfully.

“ ‘A very poor clergyman,’ said Matilda, ‘but a
clergyman. So much to our credit, Martha. Oh!

130

THE DREAM

but they’re poor old things! Poor old things! Been
curate or something all his life in some out-of-the-
world place. And lost his job. Somebody had the
heart to turn ’em out. Or something happened. I
wonder. ’E’s a funny old man. . . .

“ ‘He dodders off nearly every Saturday on supply,
they call it, to take services somewhere over the
Sunday, and like as not he comes back with his cold
worse than ever, sniffing and sniffing. It’s cruel
how they treat these poor old parsons on supply,
fetch ’em from the station in open traps they do,
in the worst of weather, and often the rectory tee¬
total without a drop of anything for a cold. Chris¬
tianity! I suppose it’s got to be. . . . The two of
them just potter about upstairs and make shift to
get their meals, such as they are, over the bedroom
fire. She even does a bit of her own washing. Drag¬
ging about. Poor old things! Old and forgotten
and left about. But they’re very little trouble and
there it is. And as I say—anyhow—he’s a clergy¬
man. And in the other room at the back there’s
a German lady who teaches—well, anything she can
persuade anyone to be taught. She hasn’t been
here more than a month, and I don’t know whether
I like her or not, but she seems straight enough
and she keeps herself pretty much to herself and
when one has a room to let one can’t always pick
and choose.

“ ‘And that’s the lot, my dear. To-morrow we’ll
have to begin. You’ll go up presently and settle
into your two rooms at the top. There’s a little
one for Mortimer and a rather bigger one for you
and Prue. There’s pegs and curtains for your

THE DREAM

131

things. I’m next door to you. I’ll give you my
little old alarum clock and show you all about it and
to-morrow at seven sharp down we come, you and
me and Prue. My Lord, I suppose, has the privilege
of his sex and doesn’t come down until half-past!
Oh! I’m a suffragette, Martha,—same as Miss
Bumpus. First thing is this fire, and unless we
rake the ashes well forward the boiler won’t heat.
Then there’s fires and boots, dust the front rooms
and breakfasts: Mr. Plaice at eight sharp and mind
it is, and Miss Bumpus at eight-thirty, and get away
with Mr. Plaice if you can first because of the short¬
ness of tablespoons. Five I got altogether and be¬
fore I lost my last third floor back I ’ad seven. ’E
w T as a nice lot; ’e was. The old people get their
own breakfast when they want it, and Frau Buch-
holz has a tray, just bread and butter and tea,
whenever we can manage it after the drawing-room’s
been seen to. That’s the programme, Martha.’

“ ‘I’ll do my best, ’Tilda,’ said my mother. ‘As
you know.’

“ ‘Hullo!’ said Matilda indicating the ceiling, ‘the
concert’s going to begin. That bump’s him letting
down the pianola pedals.’

“And then suddenly through the ceiling into our
subterranean tea-party came a rush of Clavier notes
—I can’t describe it.

“One of the few really good things of that age
was the music. Mankind perfected some things
very early; I suppose precious-stone work and gold
work have never got very much beyond the levels
it reached under the Seventeenth Dynasty in Egypt,
ages ago, and marble statuary came to a climax at

132

THE DREAM

Athens before the conquests of Alexander. I doubt
if there has ever come very much sweeter music into
the world than the tuneful stuff we had away back
there in the Age of Confusion. This music Air.
Plaice was giving us was some bits of Schumann’s
Carnaval music; we hear it still played on the
Clavier; and it was almost the first good music I
ever heard. There had been brass bands on Cliff-
stone promenade, of course, but they simply made
a glad row. I don’t know if you understand what
a pianola was. It was an instrument for playing
the Clavier with hammers directed by means of
perforated rolls, for the use of those who lacked
the intelligence and dexterity to read music and
play the Clavier with their hands. Because every¬
one was frightfully unhandy in those days. It
thumped a little and struck undiscriminating chords,
but Mr. Plaice managed it fairly well and the result

came, filtered through the ceiling- As we used

to say in those days, it might have been worse.

“At the thoughts of that music I recall—and
whenever I hear Schumann as long as I live I shall
recall—the picture of that underground room, the
little fire-place with the kettle on a hob, the kettle-
holder and the toasting fork beside the fire-place
jamb, the steel fender, the ashes, the small blotched
looking-glass over the mantel, the little china figures
of dogs in front of the glass, the gaslight in a frosted
glass globe hanging from the ceiling and lighting
the tea-things on the table. (Yes, the house was
lit by coal-gas; electric light was only just coming
in. . . . My dear Firefly! can I possibly stop my

THE DREAM 133

story to tell you what coal-gas was? A good girl
would have learnt that long ago.)

“There sat Matilda Good reduced to a sort of
imbecile ecstasy by these butterflies of melody. She
nodded her cap, she rolled her head and smiled;
she made appreciative rhythmic gestures with her
hands; one eye would meet you in a joyous search
for sympathy while the other contemplated the
dingy wall-paper beyond. I too was deeply stirred.
But my mother and sister Prue sat in their black
with an expression of forced devotion, looking very
refined and correct, exactly as they had sat and
listened to my father’s funeral service five days
before.

“ ‘Sputiful/ whispered my mother, like making
a response in church, when the first piece came to
an end. . . .

“I went to sleep that night in my little attic with
fragments of Schumann, Bach and Beethoven chas¬
ing elusively about my brain. I perceived that a
new phase of life had come to me. . . .

“Jewels,” said Sarnac. “Some sculpture, music
—just a few lovely beginnings there were already
of w r hat man could do with life. Such things I see
now were the seeds of the new world of promise
already there in the dark matrix of the old.”

§ 6

“Next morning revealed a new Mathilda Good,
active and urgent, in a loose and rather unclean
mauve cotton wrapper and her head wrapped up
in a sort of turban of figured silk. This costume
she wore most of the day except that she did her

134

THE DREAM

hair and put on a cotton lace cap in the afternoon.
(The black dress and the real lace cap and the
brooch, I was to learn, were for Sundays and for
week-day evenings of distinction.) My mother and
Prue were arrayed in rough aprons which Matilda
had very thoughtfully bought for them. There was
a great bustle in the basement of the house, and
Prue a little before eight went up with Matilda to
learn how to set out breakfast for Mr. Plaice. I
made his acquaintance later in the day when I took
up the late edition of the Evening Standard to him.
I found him a stooping, tall gentleman with a cadav¬
erous face that was mostly profile, and he made
great play with my Christian name.

“ ‘Mortimer,’ he said and neighed his neigh. ‘Well
—it might have been Norfolk-Howard.’

“There was an obscure allusion in that: for
once upon a time, ran the popular legend, a certain
Mr. Bugg seeking a less entomological name had
changed his to Norfolk-Howard, which was in those
days a very aristocratic one. . . . Whereupon vul¬
gar people had equalised matters by calling the
offensive bed-bugs that abounded in London, ‘Nor-
folk-Howards.’

“Before many weeks were past it became evident
that Matilda Good had made an excellent bargain
in her annexation of our family. She had secured
my mother’s services for nothing, and it was mani¬
fest that my mother was a born lodging-house
woman. She behaved like a partner in the concern,
and the only money Matilda ever gave her was to
pay her expenses upon some specific errand or to
buy some specific thing. Prue, however, with unex-

THE DREAM

135

pected firmness, insisted upon wages, and enforced
her claim by going out and nearly getting employ¬
ment at a dressmaker’s. In a little while Matilda
became to the lodgers an unseen power for right¬
eousness in the basement and all the staircase work
was left to my mother and Prue. Often Matilda
did not go up above the ground level once all day
until, as she said, she ‘toddled up to bed.’

“Matilda made some ingenuous attempts to utilise
me also in the service of the household: I was ex¬
horted to carry up scuttles of coal, clean boots and
knives and make myself useful generally. She even
put it to me one day whether I wouldn’t like a nice
suit with buttons—in those days they still used
to put small serving boys in tight suits of green
or brown cloth, with rows of gilt buttons as close
together as possible over their little chests and
stomachs. But the very thought of it sent my mind
to Chessing Hanger, where I had conceived an
intense hatred and dread of ‘service’ and ‘livery,’
and determined me to find some other employment
before Matilda Good’s large and insidious will en¬
veloped and overcame me. And, oddly enough, a
talk I had with Miss Beatrice Bumpus helped me
greatly in my determination.

“Miss Bumpus was a slender young woman of
about five and twenty, I suppose. She had short
brown hair, brushed back rather prettily from a
broad forehead, and she had freckles on her nose
and quick red-brown eyes. She generally wore a
plaid tweed costume rather short in the skirt and
with a coat cut like a man’s; she wore green stock¬
ings and brown shoes—I had never seen green stock-

136

THE DREAM

ings before—and she would stand on her hearthrug
in exactly the attitude Mr. Plaice adopted on his
hearthrug downstairs. Or she would be sitting at
a writing-desk against the window, smoking ciga¬
rettes. She asked me what sort of man I intended
to be, and I said with the sort of modesty I had
been taught to assume as becoming my station, that
I hadn’t thought yet.

“To which Miss Bumpus answered, ‘Liar.’

“That was the sort of remark that either kills or
cures. I said, ‘Well, Miss, I want to get educated
and I don’t know how to do it. And I don’t know
what I ought to do.’

“Miss Bumpus held me with a gesture while
she showed how nicely she could send out smoke
through her nose. Then she said, ‘Avoid Blind
Alley Occupations.’

“ ‘Yes, Miss.’

“ ‘But you don’t know what Blind Alley Occupa¬
tions are?’

“ ‘No, Miss.’

“ ‘Occupations that earn a boy wages and lead
nowhere. One of the endless pitfalls of this silly
man-made pseudo-civilisation. Never do anything
that doesn’t lead somewhere. Aim high. I must
think your case out, Mr. Harry Mortimer. I might
be able to help you. . . .’

“This was the opening of quite a number of con¬
versations between myself and Miss Bumpus. She
was a very stimulating influence in my adolescence.
She pointed out that although it was now late in
the year, there were many evening classes of various
sorts that I might attend with profit. She told me

THE DREAM

137

of all sorts of prominent and successful people who
had begun their careers from beginnings as humble
and hopeless as mine. She said I was 'unhampered’
by my sex. She asked me if I was interested in the
suffrage movement, and gave me tickets for two
meetings at which I heard her speak, and she spoke,
I thought, very well. She answered some inter¬
rupters with extreme effectiveness, and I cheered
myself hoarse for her. Something about her light
and gallant attitude to life reminded me of Fanny.
I said so one day, and found myself, before I knew
it, telling her reluctantly and shamefully the story
of our family disgrace. Miss Bumpus was much
interested.

“ 'She wasn’t like your sister Prue?’

" 'No, Miss.’

" 'Prettier?’

" 'A lot prettier. Of course—you could hardly
call Prue pretty, Miss.’

" 'I hope she’s got on all right,’ said Miss Bumpus.
'I don’t blame her a bit. But I hope she got the
best of it.’

" 'I’d give anything, Miss, to hear Fanny was
all right. ... I did care for Fanny, Miss. . . .
I’d give anything almost to see Fanny again. . . .
You won’t tell my mother, Miss, I told you anything
about Fanny? It kind of slipped out like.’

“ 'Mortimer,’ said Miss Bumpus, 'you’re a sticker.
I wish I had a little brother like you. There! I
won’t breathe a word.’

"I felt we had sealed a glorious friendship. I
adopted Votes for Women as the first plank of my
political platform. (No, Firefly, I won’t explain. I

138

THE DREAM

won’t explain anything. You must guess what a
political platform was and what its planks were.)
I followed up her indications and found out about
classes in the district where I could learn geology and
chemistry and how to speak French and German.
Very timidly I mooted the subject of my further
education in the basement living-room.”

§ 7

Sarnac looked round at the fire-lit faces of his
listeners.

“I know how topsy-turvy this story must seem
to you, but it is a fact that before I was fourteen
I had to plead for education against the ideas and
wishes of my own family. And the whole house¬
hold from top to bottom was brought into the dis¬
cussion by Matilda or my mother. Except for Miss
Bumpus and Frau Buchholz, everyone was against
the idea.

“ ‘Education,’ said Matilda, shaking her head
slowly from side to side and smiling deprecatingly.
‘Education! That’s all very well for those who
have nothing better to do, but you want to get on in
the world. You’ve got to be earning, young man.’

“ ‘But if I have education I’ll be able to earn
more.’

“Matilda screwed up her mouth in a portentous
manner and pointed to the ceiling to indicate Mr.
Plaice. ‘That’s what comes of education, young
man. A room frowsty with books and just enough
salary not to be able to do a blessed thing you want
to do. And giving yourself Airs. Business is what
you want, young man, not education.’

THE DREAM 139

“ ‘And who’s to pay for all these classes?’ said
my mother. ‘That’s what I want to know.’

“ ‘That’s what we all want to know,’ said Matilda
Good.

“ ‘If I can’t get education-’ I said, and left

the desperate sentence unfinished. I am afraid I
was near weeping. To learn nothing beyond my
present ignorance seemed to me then like a sentence
of imprisonment for life. It wasn’t I who suffered
that alone. Thousands of poor youngsters of four¬
teen or fifteen in those days knew enough to see
clearly that the doors of practical illiteracy were
closing in upon them, and yet did not know enough
to find a way of escape from this mental extinction.

“‘Look here!’ I said, ‘if I can get some sort of
job during the day, may I pay for classes in the
evening?’

“ ‘If you can earn enough,’ said Matilda. ‘It’s
no worse I suppose than going to these new cinema
shows or buying sweets for girls.’

“‘You’ve got to pay in for your room here and
your keep, Morty, first,’ said my mother. ‘It isn’t
fair on Miss Good if you don’t.’

“ ‘I know,’ I said, with my heart sinking. ‘I’ll
pay in for my board and lodging. Some’ow. I don’t
want to be dependent.’

“ ‘What good you think it will do you,’ said
Matilda Good, ‘I don’t know. You’ll pick up a
certain amount of learning perhaps, get a certificate
or something and ideas above your station. You’ll
give all the energy you might use in shoving your
way up in some useful employment. You’ll get
round-shouldered and near-sighted. And just to

140

THE DREAM

grow up a discontented misfit. Well—have it your
own way if you must. If you earn the money your¬
self it’s yours to spend.’

“Mr. Plaice was no more encouraging. ‘Well, my
noble Mortimer/ he said, ‘they tell me Arr that you
aspire to university honours.’

“ ‘I want to learn a little more than I know, Sir.’

“ ‘And join the ranks of the half-educated prole¬
tariat?’

“It sounded bad. ‘I hope not, Sir,’ I said.

“ ‘And what classes do you propose to attend,
Mortimer?’

“ ‘Whatever there are.’

“ ‘No plan? No aim?’

“ ‘I thought they’d know/

“‘Whatever they give you—eh? A promiscuous
appetite. And while you—while you Arr indulge
in this mixed feast of learning, this futile rivalry
with the children of the leisured classes, somebody
I suppose will have to keep you. Don’t you think
it’s a bit hard on that kind mother of yours who
toils day and night for you, that you shouldn’t work
and do your bit, eh? One of the things, Mortimer,
we used to learn in our much-maligned public
schools, was something we called playing cricket.
Well, I ask you, is this—this disinclination to do a
bit of the earning, Arr, is it playing cricket? I could
expect such behaviour from an ’Arry, you know,
but not from a Mortimer. Noblesse oblige. You
think it over, my boy. There’s such a thing as learn¬
ing, but there’s such a thing as Duty. Many of us
have to be content with lives of unassuming labour.

THE DREAM 141

Many of us. Men who under happier circumstances
might have done great things. . . .’

“The Moggeridges were gently persuasive in the
same strain. My mother had put her case to them
also. Usually I was indisposed to linger in the
Moggeridge atmosphere; they had old-fashioned
ideas about draughts, and there was a peculiar aged
flavour about them; they were, to be plain, a very
dirty old couple indeed. With declining strength
they had relaxed by imperceptible degrees from the
not very exacting standards of their youth. I used
to cut into their room and out of it again as quickly
as I could.

“But half a century of the clerical life among
yielding country folk had given these bent, decaying,
pitiful creatures a wonderful way with their social
inferiors. ‘Morning, Sir and Mam,’ I said, and put
down the coals I had brought and took up the empty
scuttle-lining I had replaced.

“Mrs. Moggeridge advanced shakily so as to inter¬
cept my retreat. She had silvery hair, a wrinkled
face and screwed-up red-rimmed eyes; she was short¬
sighted and came peering up very close to me when¬
ever she spoke to me, breathing in my face. She
held out a quivering hand to arrest me; she spoke
with a quavering voice. ‘And how’s Master Morty
this morning?’ she said, with kindly condescending
intonations.

“ ‘Very well thank you, Mam,’ I said.

“ ‘I’ve been hearing rather a sad account of you,
Morty, rather a sad account.’

“ ‘Sorry, Mum,’ I said, and wished I had the

142 THE DREAM

courage to tell her that my life was no business of
hers.

“ ‘They say you’re discontented, Morty. They
say you complain of God’s Mercies.’

“Mr. Moggeridge had been sitting in the arm¬
chair by the fire-place. He was in his slippers and
shirt-sleeves and he had been reading a newspaper.
Now he looked at me over his silver-rimmed spec¬
tacles and spoke in a rich succulent voice.

“ ‘I’m sorry you should be giving trouble to that
dear mother of yours,’ he said. ‘Very sorry. She’s
a devoted saintly woman.

“ ‘Yessir,’ I said.

“ ‘Very few boys nowadays have the privilege of
such an upbringing as yours. Some day you may
understand what you owe her.’

(“ ‘I begin to,’ ” interjected Sarnac.)

“ ‘It seems you want to launch out upon some
extravagant plan of classes instead of settling dowm
quietly in your proper sphere. Is that so?’

“ ‘I don’t feel I know enough yet, Sir,’ I said. ‘I
feel I’d like to learn more.’

“ ‘Knowledge isn’t always happiness, Morty,’ said
Mrs. Moggeridge close to me—much too close to me.

“ ‘And what may these classes be that are tempt¬
ing you to forget the honour you owe your dear
good mother?’ said Mr. Moggeridge.

“ ‘I don’t know yet, Sir. They say there’s classes
in geology and French and things like that.’

“Old Mr. Moggeridge waved his hand in front
of himself with an expression of face as though it
was I who emitted an evil odour. ‘Geology!’ he
said. ‘French—the language of Voltaire. Let me

THE DREAM

143

tell you one thing plainly, my boy, your mother is
quite right in objecting to these classes. Geology
—geology is—All Wrong. It has done more harm
in the last fifty years than any other single influence
whatever. It undermines faith. It sows doubt. I
do not speak ignorantly, Mortimer. I have seen
lives wrecked and destroyed and souls lost by this
same geology. I am an old learned man, and I
have examined the work of many of these so-called
geologists—Huxley, Darwin and the like; I have
examined it very, very carefully and very, very toler¬
antly, and I tell you they are all, all of them, hope¬
lessly mistaken men. . . . And what good will such
knowledge do you? Will it make you happier?
Will it make you better? No, my lad. But I
know of something that will. Something older than
geology. Older and better. Sarah dear, give me that
book there, please. Yes’—reverentially —‘the Book.’

“His wife handed him a black-bound Bible, with
its cover protected against rough usage by a metal
edge. ‘Now, my boy,’ he said, ‘let me give you this
—this old familiar book, with an old man’s blessing.
In that is all the knowledge worth having, all the
knowledge you will ever need. You will always find
something fresh in it and always something beau¬
tiful.’ He held it out to me.

“Accepting it seemed the shortest way out of the
room, so I took it. ‘Thank you, Sir,’ I said.

“ ‘Promise me you will read it.’

“ ‘Oh yes, Sir.’

“I turned to go. But giving was in the air.

“ ‘Now, Mortimer,’ said Mrs. Moggeridge, ‘do
please promise me to seek strength where strength

144

THE DREAM

is to be found and try to be a better son to that dear
struggling woman.’ And as she spoke she proffered
for my acceptance an extremely hard, small, yellow
orange.

“ ‘Thank you, Mam,’ I said, made shift to stow
her gift in my pocket, and with the Bible in one
hand and the empty coal-scuttle-lining in the other,
escaped.

“I returned wrathfully to the basement and
deposited my presents on the window-sill. Some
impulse made me open the Bible, and inside the
cover I found, imperfectly erased, the shadowy out¬
lines of these words, printed in violet ink: ‘Not
to be Removed from the Waiting-Room.’ I puzzled
over the significance of this for some time.”

“And what did it signify?’ asked Firefly.

“I do not know to this day,” said Sarnac. “But
apparently the reverend gentleman had acquired
that Book at a railway-station during one of his
journeys as a Sunday supply.”

“You mean-?” said Firefly.

“No more than I say. He was in many ways
a peculiar old gentleman, and his piety was, I fancy,
an essentially superficial exudation. He was—I will
not say ‘dishonest,’ but ‘spasmodically acquisitive.’
And like many old people in those days he preferred
his refreshment to be stimulating rather than nutri¬
tious, and so he may have blurred his ethical per¬
ceptions. An odd thing about him—Matilda Good
was the first to point it out—was that he rarely took
an umbrella away with him when he went on supply
and almost always he came back with one—and
once he came back with two. But he never kept

THE DREAM

145

his umbrellas; he would take them off for long walks
and return without them, looking all the brighter
for it. I remember one day I was in the room when
he returned from such an expedition, there had been
a shower and his coat was wet. Mrs. Moggeridge
made him change it and lamented that he had lost
his umbrella again.

" 'Not lost,’ I heard the old man say in a voice of
infinite gentleness. 'Not lost, dear. Not lost; but
gone before. . . . Gone before the rain came. . . .
The Lord gave. . . . Lord hath taken ’way.’

"For a time he was silent, coat in hand. He stood
with his shirt-sleeve resting on the mantel-shelf, his
foot upon the fender, and his venerable hairy face
gazing down into the fire. He seemed to be thinking
deep, sad things. Then he remarked in a thoughtful,
less obituary tone: 'Ten’n-sixpence. A jolly goo’
’mbrella.”

§ 8

"Frau Buchholz was a poor, lean, distressful
woman of five and forty or more, with a table lit¬
tered with the documents of some obscure litigation.
She did not altogether discourage my ambitions, but
she laid great stress on the hopelessness of attempt¬
ing Kultur without a knowledge of German, and I
am inclined to think that her attitude was deter¬
mined mainly by a vague and desperate hope that
I might be induced to take lessons in German from
her.

"Brother Ernest was entirely against my ambi¬
tion. He was shy and vocally inexpressive, and he
took me to the Victoria Music Hall and spent a long

146

THE DREAM

evening avoiding the subject. It was only as we
drew within five minutes of home that he spoke of it.

“ ‘What’s all this about your not being satisfied
with your education, ’Arry?’ he asked. ‘I thought
you’d had a pretty decent bit of schooling.’

“ ‘I don’t feel I know anything,’ I said. ‘I don’t
know history or geography or anything. I don’t
even know my own grammar.’

“ ‘You know enough,’ said Ernest. ‘You know
enough to get a job. Knowing more wmuld only
make you stuck-up. We don’t want any more stuek-
ups in the family, God knows.’

“I knew he referred to Fanny, but of course
neither of us mentioned her shameful name.

“ ‘Anyhow, I suppose I’ll have to chuck it,’ I said
bitterly.

“ ‘That’s about it, ’Arry. I know you’re a sensible
chap—at bottom. You got to be what you got to be.’

“The only encouragement I got to resist mental
extinction was from Miss Beatrice Bumpus, and
after a time I found even that source of consolation
was being cut off from me. For my mother began
to develop the most gross and improbable suspicions
about Miss Bumpus. You see I stayed sometimes
as long as ten or even twelve minutes in the drawing¬
room, and it was difficult for so good a woman as
my mother, trained in the most elaborate precau¬
tions of separation between male and female, to
understand that two young people of opposite sex
could have any liking for each other’s company
unless some sort of gross familiarity was involved.
The good of those days, living as they did in a state
of inflamed restraint, had very exaggerated ideas of

THE DREAM

147

the appetites, capacities and uncontrollable duplicity
of normal human beings. And so my mother began
to manoeuvre in the most elaborate way to replace
me by Prue as a messenger to Miss Bumpus. And
when I was actually being talked to—and even talk¬
ing—in the drawing-room I had an increasing sense
of that poor misguided woman hovering upon the
landing outside, listening in a mood of anxious curi¬
osity and ripening for a sudden inrush, a disgraceful
exposure, wild denunciation of Miss Bumpus, and
the rescue of the vestiges of my damaged moral
nature. I might never have realised what was going
on if it had not been for my mother’s direct ques¬
tionings and warnings. Her conception of a proper
upbringing for the young on these matters was
a carefully preserved ignorance hedged about by
shames and foul terrors. So she was at once ex¬
tremely urgent and extraordinarily vague with me.
What was I up to—staying so long with that
woman? I wasn’t to listen to anything she told me.
I was to be precious careful what I got up to up
there. I might find myself in more trouble than I
thought. There were women in this world of a
shamelessness it made one blush to think of. She’d
always done her best to keep me from wickedness
and nastiness.”

“But she was mad!” said Willow.

“All the countless lunatic asylums of those days
wouldn’t have held a tithe of the English people
who were as mad in that way as she was.”

“But the whole world was mad?” said Sunray.
“All those people, except perhaps Miss Bumpus,
talked about your education like insane people! Did

148

THE DREAM

none of them understand the supreme wickedness
of hindering the growth of a human mind?”

“It was a world of suppression and evasion. You
cannot understand anything about it unless you
understand that.”

“But the whole world!” said Radiant.

“Most of it. It was still a fear-haunted world.
‘Submit/ said the ancient dread, ‘do nothing—lest
you offend. And from your children— hide.’ What
I am telling you about the upbringing of Harry
Mortimer Smith was generally true of the upbring¬
ing of the enormous majority of the inhabitants of
the earth. It was not merely that their minds were
starved and poisoned. Their minds were stamped
upon and mutilated. That world was so pitiless and
confused, so dirty and diseased, because it was cowed
and dared not learn of remedies. In Europe in those
days we used to be told the most extraordinary
stories of the wickedness and cruelty of the Chinese,
and one favourite tale was that little children were
made to grow up inside great porcelain jars in order
to distort their bodies to grotesque shapes so that
they could be shown at fairs or sold to rich men.
The Chinese certainly distorted the feet of young
women for some obscure purpose, and this may have
been the origin of this horrible legend. But our
children in England were mentally distorted in
exactly the same fashion except that for porcelain
jars we used mental tin-cans and dustbins. . . .
My dears! when I talk of this I cease to be Sarnac!
All the rage and misery of crippled and thwarted
Harry Mortimer Smith comes back to me.”

THE DREAM 149

“Did you get to those classes of yours?” asked
Sunray. “I hope you did.”

“Not for a year or two—though Miss Bumpus
did what she could for me. She lent me a lot of
books—in spite of much ignorant censorship on the
part of my mother—and I read voraciously. But, I
don’t know if you will understand it, my relations
with Miss Bumpus were slowly poisoned by the
interpretations my mother was putting upon them.
I think you will see how easy it was for a boy in
my position to fall in love, fall into a deep emotional
worship of so bright and friendly a young woman.
Most of us young men nowadays begin by adoring
a woman older than ourselves. Adoring is the word
rather than loving. It’s not a mate we need at first
but the helpful, kindly goddess who stoops to us.
And of course I loved her. But I thought much
more of serving her or dying for her than of embrac¬
ing her. When I was away from her my imagination
might go so far as to dream of kissing her hands.

“And then came my mother with this hideous
obsession of hers, jealous for something she called
my purity, treating this white passion of gratitude
and humility as though it was the power that drags
a blow-fly to some heap of offal. A deepening shame
and ungraciousness came into my relations with
Miss Bumpus. I became red-eared and tongue-tied
in her presence. Possibilities I might never have
thought of but for my mother’s suggestions grew
disgustingly vivid in my mind. I dreamt about her
grotesquely. When presently I found employment
for my days my chances of seeing her became infre¬
quent. She receded as a personality and friend,

150 THE DREAM

and quite against my will became a symbol of
femininity.

“Among the people who called to see her a man
of three or four and thirty became frequent. My
spirit flamed into an intense and impotent jealousy
on account of this man. He would take tea with
her and stay for two hours or more. My mother
took care to mention his visits in my hearing at
every opportunity. She called him Miss Bumpus’
‘fancy man/ or alluded to him archly: ‘A certain
person called again to-day, Prue. When good-lookin’
young men are shown in at the door, votes flies out
of the winder.’ I tried to seem indifferent but my
ears and cheeks got red and hot. My jealousy w T as
edged with hate. I avoided seeing Miss Bumpus
for weeks together. I sought furiously for some girl,
any girl, who would serve to oust her image from
my imagination.”

Sarnac stopped abruptly and remained for a time
staring intently into the fire. His expression was
one of amused regret. “How little and childish
it seems now!” he said; “and how bitter—oh! how
bitter it was at the time!”

“Poor little errand-boy!” said Sunray, stroking
his hair. “Poor little errand-boy in love.”

“What an uncomfortable distressful world it must
have been for all young things!” said Willow.

“Uncomfortable and pitiless,” said Sarnac.

§ 9

“My first employment in London was as an
errand-boy—‘junior porter’ was the exact phrase—
to a draper’s shop near Victoria Station: I packed

THE DREAM

151

parcels and carried them to their destinations; my
next job was to be boy in general to a chemist named
Humberg in a shop beyond Lupus Street. A chem¬
ist then was a very different creature from the kind
of man or woman we call a chemist to-day; he was
much more like the Apothecary we find in Shake¬
speare’s plays and such-like old literature; he was
a dealer in drugs, poisons, medicines, a few spices,
colouring matters and such-like odd commodities.
I washed endless bottles, delivered drugs and medi¬
cines, cleared up a sort of backyard, and did any¬
thing else that there was to be done within the
measure of my capacity.

“Of all the queer shops one found in that old-
world London, the chemists’ shops were, I think, the
queerest. They had come almost unchanged out of
the Middle Ages, as we used to call them, when
Western Europe, superstitious, dirty, diseased and
degenerate, thrashed by the Arabs and Mongols and
Turks, afraid to sail the ocean or fight out of armour,
cowered behind the walls of its towns and castles,
stole, poisoned, assassinated and tortured, and pre¬
tended to be the Roman Empire still in being.
Western Europe in those days was ashamed of its
natural varieties of speech and talked bad Latin;
it dared not look a fact in the face but nosed for
knowledge among riddles and unreadable parch¬
ments; it burnt men and women alive for laughing
at the absurdities of its Faith, and it thought the
stars of Heaven were no better than a greasy pack
of cards by which fortunes were to be told. In
those days it was that the tradition of the ’Pothecary
was made; you know him as he figures in Romeo

152

THE DREAM

and Juliet; the time in which I lived this life was
barely four centuries and a half from old Shake¬
speare. The ’Pothecary was in a conspiracy of
pretentiousness with the almost equally ignorant
doctors of his age, and the latter wrote and he ‘made
up’ prescriptions in occult phrases and symbols.
In our window there were great glass bottles of red-
and yellow- and blue-tinted water, through which
our gas-lamps within threw a mystical light on the
street pavement.”

“Was there a stuffed alligator?” asked Firefly.

“No. We were just out of the age of stuffed
alligators, but below these coloured bottles in the
window we had stupendous china jars with gilt caps
mystically inscribed—let me see! Let me think!
One was Sem. Coriand. Another was Rad. Sarsap.
Then—what was the fellow in the corner? Marant.
Ar. And opposite him— C. Cincordif. And behind
the counter to look the customer in the face were
neat little drawers with golden and precious letters
thereon; Pil. Rhubarb, and Pil. Antibil. and many
more bottles, 01. Amyg. and Tinct. Iod., rows and
rows of bottles, mystic, wonderful. I do not re¬
member ever seeing Mr. Humberg take anything,
much less sell anything, from all this array of erudite
bottles and drawers; his normal trade was done in
the bright little packets of an altogether different
character that were piled all over the counter, bright
unblushing little packets that declared themselves
to be Gummidge’s Fragrant and Digestive Tooth
Paste, Hooper’s Corn Cure, Luxtone’s Lady’s Rem¬
edy, Tinker’s Pills for All Occasions, and the like.
Such things were asked for openly and loudly by

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153

customers; they were our staple trade. But also
there were many transactions conducted in under¬
tones which I never fully understood. I would be
sent off to the yard on some specious pretext when¬
ever a customer was discovered to be of the sotto
voce variety, and I can only suppose that Mr. Hum-
berg was accustomed at times to go beyond the
limits of his professional qualification and to deal
out advice and instruction that were legally the
privileges of the qualified medical man. You must
remember that in those days many things that we
teach plainly and simply to every one were tabooed
and made to seem occult and mysterious and very,
very shameful and dirty.

“My first reaction to this chemist’s shop was a
violent appetite for Latin. I succumbed to its sug¬
gestion that Latin was the key to all knowledge,
and that indeed statements did not become knowl¬
edge until they had passed into the Latin tongue.
For a few coppers I bought in a second-hand book¬
shop an old and worn Latin Principia written by
a namesake Smith; I attacked it with great de¬
termination and found this redoubtable language
far more understandable, reasonable and straight¬
forward than the elusive irritable French and the
trampling coughing German I had hitherto at¬
tempted. This Latin was a dead language, a skele¬
ton language plainly articulated; it never moved
about and got away from one as a living language
did. In a little while I was able to recognize words
I knew upon our bottles and drawers and in the
epitaphs upon the monuments in Westminster
Abbey, and soon I could even construe whole

154

THE DREAM

phrases. I dug out Latin books from the second¬
hand booksellers’ boxes, and some I could read and
some I could not. There was a war history of that
first Caesar, Julius Caesar, the adventurer who ex¬
tinguished the last reek of the decaying Roman
republic, and there was a Latin New Testament;
I got along fairly well with both. But there was
a Latin poet, Lucretius, I could not construe; even
with an English verse translation on the opposite
page I could not construe him. But I read that
English version with intense curiosity. It is an
extraordinary thing to note, but that same Lucretius,
an old Roman poet who lived and died two thousand
years before my time, four thousand years from now,
gave an account of the universe and of man’s be¬
ginnings far truer and more intelligible than the old
Semitic legends I had been taught in my Sunday
school.

"One of the queerest aspects of those days was
the mingling of ideas belonging to different ages and
phases of human development due to the irregular¬
ity and casualness of such educational organisation
as we had. In school and church alike, obstinate
pedantry darkened the minds of men. Europeans
in the twentieth Christian century mixed up the
theology of the Pharaohs, the cosmogony of the
priest-kings of Sumeria, with the politics of the
seventeenth century and the ethics of the cricket-
field and prize-ring, and that in a world which had
got to aeroplanes and telephones.

“My own case was typical of the limitations of
the time. In that age of ceaseless novelty there
was I, trying to get back by way of Latin to the half

THE DREAM

155

knowledge of the Ancients. Presently I began to
struggle with Greek also, but I never got very far
with that. I found a chance of going once a week
on what was called early-closing night, after my
day’s work was done, to some evening classes in
chemistry. And this chemistry I discovered had
hardly anything in common with the chemistry of
a chemist’s shop. The story of matter and force
that it told belonged to another and a newer age.
I was fascinated by these wider revelations of the
universe I lived in, I ceased to struggle with Greek
and I no longer hunted the dingy book-boxes for
Latin classics but for modern scientific works.
Lucretius I found was hardly less out of date than
Genesis. Among the books that taught me much
were one called Physiography by a writer named
Gregory, Clodd’s Story of Creation and Lankester’s
Science from an Easy Chair. I do not know if they
were exceptionally good books; they were the ones
that happened to come to my hand and awaken my
mind. But do you realise the amazing conditions
under which men were living at that time, when
a youngster had to go about as eager and furtive
as a mouse seeking food, to get even such knowledge
of the universe and himself as then existed? I still
remember how I read first of the differences and
resemblances between apes and men and specula¬
tions arising thencefrom about the nature of the
sub-men who came before man. It was in the shed
in the yard that I sat and read. Mr. Humberg
was on the sofa in the parlour behind the shop
sleeping off his midday meal with one ear a-cock
for the shop-bell, and I, with one ear a-cock for the

156

THE DREAM

shop-bell and the other for any sounds of move¬
ment in the parlour, read for the first time of the
forces that had made me what I was—when I ought
to have been washing out bottles.

“At one point in the centre of the display behind
the counter in the shop was a row of particularly
brave and important-looking glass jars wearing
about their bellies the gold promises of Aqua Fortis,
Amm. Hyd. and such-like names, and one day as I
was sweeping the floor I observed Mr. Humberg
scrutinising these. He held one up to the light and
shook his head at its flocculent contents. ‘Harry,’
he said, ‘see this row of bottles?’

“ ‘Yessir.’

“ ‘Pour ’em all out and put in fresh water.’

“I stared, broom in hand, aghast at the waste.
‘They won’t blow up if I mix ’em?’ I said.

“‘Blow up!’ said Mr. Humberg. ‘It’s only stale
water. There’s been nothing else in these bottles
for a score of years. Stuff I want is behind the
dispensary partition—and it’s different stuff now¬
adays. Wash ’em out—and then we’ll put in some
water from the pump. We just have ’em for the
look of ’em. The old women wouldn’t be happy if
we hadn’t got ’em there.”

Part II

The Loves and Death of Harry
Mortimer Smith

CHAPTER THE FIFTH

FANNY DISCOVERS HERSELF

§ 1

“And now,” said Sarnac, “I can draw near to the
essentials of life and tell you the sort of thing love
was in that crowded, dingy, fear-ruled world of the
London fogs and the amber London sunshine. It
w r as a slender, wild-eyed, scared and daring emotion
in a dark forest of cruelties and repressions. It
soon grew old and crippled, bitter-spirited and black¬
hearted, but as it happened, death came early
enough for me to die with a living love still in my
heart. . . .”

“To live again,” said Sunray very softly.

“And love again,” said Sarnac, patting her knee.
“Let me see-. . . .”

He took a stake that had fallen from the fire and
thrust it into the bright glow at the centre and
watched it burst into a sierra of flames.

“I think that the first person I was in love with
was my sister Fanny. When I was a boy of eleven
or twelve I was really in love with her. But some¬
how about that time I was also in love with an
undraped plaster nymph who sat very bravely on
a spouting dolphin in some public gardens near the
middle of Cliffstone. She lifted her chin and smiled
and waved one hand and she had the sweetest smile

159

160

THE DREAM

and the dearest little body imaginable. I loved her
back particularly, and there was a point where you
looked at her from behind and just caught the soft
curve of her smiling cheek and her jolly little nose-
tip and chin and the soft swell of her breast under
her lifted arm. I would sneak round her furtively
towards this particular view-point, having been too
well soaked in shame about all such lovely things
to look openly. But I never seemed to look my fill.

“One day as I was worshipping her in this fashion,
half-turned to her and half-turned to a bed of flowers
and looking at her askance, I became aware of an
oldish man with a large white face, seated on a gar¬
den seat and leaning forward and regarding me with
an expression of oafish cunning as if he had found
me out and knew my secret. He looked like the
spirit of lewdness incarnate. Suddenly panic over¬
whelmed me and I made off—and never went near
that garden again. Angels with flaming shames
prevented me. Of a terror of again meeting that
horrible old man. . . .

“Then with my coming to London Miss Beatrice
Bumpus took control of my imagination and was
Venus and all the goddesses, and this increased
rather than diminished after she had gone away.
For she went away and, I gather, married the young
man I hated; she went away and gave up her work
for the Vote and was no doubt welcomed back by
those Warwickshire Bumpuses (who hunted) with
the slaughter of a fatted fox and every sort of
rejoicing. But her jolly frank and boyish face was
the heroine’s in a thousand dreams. I saved her
life in adventures in all parts of the world and some-

THE DREAM

161

times she saved mine; we clung together over the
edges of terrific precipices until I went to sleep, and
when I was the conquering Muhammad after a
battle, she stood out among the captive women and
answered back when I said I would never love her,
with two jets of cigarette smoke and the one word,
‘Liar!’

“I met no girls of my own age at all while I was
errand-boy to Mr. Humberg, my evening classes
and my reading kept me away from the facile en¬
counters of the streets. Sometimes, however, when
I could not fix my attention upon my books, I
would slip off to Wilton Street and Victoria Street
where there was a nocturnal promenade under the
electric lamps. There schoolgirls and little drabs
and errand-boys and soldiers prowled and accosted
one another. But though I was attracted to some
of the girlish figures that flitted by me I was also
shy and fastidious. I was drawn by an overpower¬
ing desire for something intense and beautiful that
vanished whenever I drew near to reality.”

§ 2

“Before a year was over there w T ere several changes
in the Pimlico boarding-house. The poor old Mog-
geridges caught influenza, a variable prevalent epi¬
demic of the time, and succumbed to inflammation
of the lungs following the fever. They died within
three days of each other, and my mother and Prue
were the only mourners at their dingy little funeral.
Frau Buchholz fades out of my story; I do not
remember clearly when she left the house nor who
succeeded her. Miss Beatrice Bumpus abandoned

162

THE DREAM

the cause of woman’s suffrage and departed, and the
second floor was taken by an extremely intermittent
couple who roused my mother’s worst suspicions and
led to serious differences of opinion between her and
Matilda Good.

“You see these new-comers never settled in with
any grave and sober luggage; they would come and
stay for a day or so and then not reappear for a week
or more, and they rarely arrived or departed to¬
gether. This roused my mother’s moral observation,
and she began hinting that perhaps they were not
properly married after all. She forbade Prue ever
to go to the drawing-room floor, and this precipitated
a conflict with Matilda. ‘What’s this about Prue
and the drawing-room?’ Matilda asked. ‘You’re
putting ideas into the girl’s head.’

“ ‘I’m trying to keep them from ’er,’ said my
mother. ‘She’s got eyes.’

“ ‘And fingers,’ said Matilda with dark allusive¬
ness. ‘What’s Prue been seeing now?’

“ ‘Marks,’ said my mother.

“ ‘What marks?’ said Matilda.

“ ‘Marks enough,’ said my mother. ‘ ’Is things
are marked one name and ’Er’s another, and neither
of them Milton, which is the name they’ve given
us. And the way that woman speaks to you, as
though she felt you might notice sumpthing—
friendly like and a bit afraid of you. And that ain’t
all! By no means all! I’m not blind and Prue isn’t
blind. There’s kissing and making love going on
at all times in the day! Directly they’ve got ’ere
sometimes. Hardly waiting for one to get out of

THE DREAM 163

the room. I’m not a perfect fool, Matilda. I been
married.’

“ 'What’s that got to do with us? We’re a lodg-
ing-’ouse, not a set of Nosey Parkers. If Mr. and
Mrs. Milton like to have their linen marked a
hundred different names, what’s that to us? Their
book’s always marked paid in advance with thanks,
Matilda Good, and that’s married enough for me.
See? You’re an uneasy woman to have in a lodg¬
ing-house, Martha, an uneasy woman. There’s no
give and take about you. No save your fare. There
was that trouble you made about the boy and Miss
Bumpus—ridiculous it was—and now seemingly
there’s going to be more trouble about Prue and
Mrs. Milton—who’s a lady, mind you, say what
you like, and—what’s more—a gentlewoman. I
wish you’d mind your own business a bit more,
Martha, and let Mr. and Mrs. Milton mind theirs.
If they aren’t properly married it’s they’ve got to
answer for it in the long run, not you. You’ll get
even with them all right in the Last Great Day.
Meanwhile do they do ’arm to anyone? A quieter
couple and less trouble to look after I’ve never had
in all my lodging-house days.’

"My mother made no answer.

" 'Well?’ challenged Matilda.

" ‘It’s hard to be waiting on a shameless woman,’
said my mother, obstinate and white-lipped.

" 'It’s harder still to be called a shameless woman
because you’ve still got your maiden name on some
of your things,’ said Matilda Good. 'Don’t talk
such Rubbish, Martha.’

" 'I don’t see why ’E should ’ave a maiden name

164 THE DREAM

too—on ’is pyjamas/ said my mother, rallying after
a moment.

“ ‘You don’t know Anything, Martha/ said Ma¬
tilda, fixing her with one eye of extreme animosity
and regarding the question in the abstract with the
other. ‘I’ve often thought it of you and now I
say it to you. You don’t know Anything. I’m
going to keep Mr. and Mrs. Milton as long as I
can, and if you’re too pernikkety to wait on them,
there’s those who will. I won’t have my lodgers
insulted. I won’t have their underclothes dragged
up against them. Why! Come to think of it!
Of course! He borrowed those pyjamas of ’is! Or
they was given him by a gentleman friend they
didn’t fit. Or he’s been left money and had to
change his name sudden like. It often happens.
Often. You see it in the papers. And things get
mixed in the wash. Some laundries, they’re regular
Exchanges. Mr. Plaice, he once had a collar with
Fortescue on it. Brought it back after his summer
holiday. Fortescue! There’s evidence for you.
You aren’t going to bring up something against
Mr. Plaice on account of that, Martha? You aren’t
going to say he’s been living a double life and isn’t
properly a bachelor. Do think a little clearer,
Martha. And don’t think so much evil. There’s
a hundred ways round before you think evil. But
you like to think evil, Martha. I’ve noticed it times
and oft. You fairly wallow in it. You haven’t the
beginnings of a germ of Christian charity.’

“ ‘One can’t help seeing things,’ said my mother
rather shattered.

“‘You can’t/ said Matilda Good. ‘There’s those

THE DREAM

165

who can’t see an inch beyond their noses, and yet
they see too much. And the more I see of you the
more I’m inclined to think you’re one of that sort.
Anyhow, Mr. and Mrs. Milton stay here—whoever
else goes. Whoever else goes. That’s plain, I hope,
Martha.’

“My mother was stricken speechless. She bridled
and subsided and then, except for necessary and
unavoidable purposes, remained hurt and silent for
some days, speaking only when she was spoken to.
Matida did not seem to mind. But I noticed that
when presently Matilda sent Prue upstairs with the
Miltons’ tea my mother’s stiffness grew stiffer, but
she made no open protest.”

§ 3

“And then suddenly Fanny reappeared in my
world.

“It was a mere chance that restored Fanny to
me. All our links had been severed when we re¬
moved from Cliffstone to London. My brother
Ernest was her herald.

“We were at supper in the basement room and
supper was usually a pleasant meal. Matilda Good
would make it attractive with potatoes roasted in
their jackets, or what she called a Trying-pan’ of
potatoes and other vegetables in dripping or such¬
like heartening addition to cold bacon and bread
and cheese and small beer. And she would read
bits out of the newspaper to us and discuss them,
having a really very lively intelligence, or she would
draw me out to talk of the books I’d been reading.
She took a great interest in murders and such-like

166

THE DREAM

cases, and we all became great judges of motive
and evidence under her stimulation. ‘You may
say it’s morbid, Martha, if you like,’ she said; ‘but
there never was a murder yet that wasn’t brimful
of humanity. Brimful. I doubt sometimes if we
know what anyone’s capable of until they’ve com¬
mitted a murder or two.’

“My mother rarely failed to rise to her bait.
‘I can’t think ’ow you can say such things, Matilda,’
she would say. . . .

“We heard the sound of a motor-car in the street
above. Brother Ernest descended by the area steps
and my sister Prue let him in. He appeared in
his chauffeur’s uniform, cap in hand, leather jacket
and gaiters.

“ ‘Got a night off?’ asked Matilda.

“ ‘Court Theatre at eleven,’ said Ernest. ‘So
I thought I’d come in for a bit of a warm and a
chat.’

“ ‘Have a snack?’ said Matilda. ‘Prue, get him
a plate and a knife and fork and a glass. One
glass of this beer won’t hurt your driving. Why!
we haven’t seen you for ages!’

“ ‘Thank you, Miss Good,’ said Ernest, who was
always very polite to her, ‘I will ’ave a snack. I
bin’ here, there and everywhere, but it isn’t that
I haven’t wanted to call on you.’

“Refreshment was administered and conversa¬
tion hung fire for awhile. One or two starts were
made and came to an early end. Ernest’s manner
suggested preoccupation and Matilda regarded him
keenly. ‘And what have you got to tell us, Ernie?’
she said suddenly.

THE DREAM

167

“ ‘We-el/ said Ernest, ‘it’s a curious thing you
should say that, Miss Good, for I ’ave got some¬
thing to tell you. Something—well, I don’t know
’ow to put it—curious like.”

“Matilda refilled his glass.

“ ‘I seen Fanny,” said Ernest, coming to it with
violent abruptness.

“ ‘No!’ gasped my mother, and for a moment no
one else spoke.

“ ‘So!’ said Matilda, putting her arms on the table
and billowing forward, ‘you’ve seen Fanny! Pretty
little Fanny that I used to know. And where did
you see her, Ernie?’

“Ernest had some difficulty in shaping out his
story. ‘It was a week last Tuesday,’ he said after
a pause.

“ ‘She wasn’t—not one of Them—about Victoria
Station?’ panted my mother.

“ ‘Did you see her first or did she see you?’ asked
Matilda.

“ ‘A week ago last Tuesday/ my brother repeated.

“ ‘And did you speak to her?’

“ ‘Not at the time I didn’t. No/

“ ‘Did she speak to you?’

“ ‘No/

“ ‘Then ’ow d’you know it was our Fanny?’ asked
Prue, who had been listening intently.

“ ‘I thought she’d gone to ’er fate in some foreign
country—being so near Boulogne,’ my mother said.
‘I thought them White Slave Traders ’ad the
decency to carry a girl off right away from ’er
’ome. . . . Fanny! On the streets of London!
Near ’ere. I told ’er what it would come to. Time

168

THE DREAM

and again I told ’er. Merry an ’onest man I said,
but she was greedy and ’eadstrong. . . . ’Ead-
strong and vain. . . . She didn’t try to follow you,
Ernie, to find out where we were or anything like
that?’

“My brother Ernest’s face displayed his profound
perplexity. Tt wasn’t at all like that, mother,’ he
said. Tt wasn’t—that sort of thing. You see-■'

“He began a struggle with the breast pocket of
his very tightly fitting leather jacket and at last
produced a rather soiled letter. He held it in his
hand, neither attempting to read it nor offering it
to us. But holding it in his hand seemed to crystal¬
lise his very rudimentary narrative powers. ‘I bet¬
ter tell you right from the beginning,’ he said. Tt
isn’t at all what you’d suppose. Tuesday week it
was; last Tuesday week.’

“Matilda Good laid a restraining hand on my
mother’s arm. Tn the evening I suppose?’ she
helped.

“ Tt was a dinner and fetch,’ said my brother.
‘Of course you understand I ’adn’t set eyes on
Fanny for pretty near six years. It was ’er knew
me.’

“ ‘You had to take these people to a dinner and
fetch them back again?’ said Matilda.

“ ‘Orders,’ said Ernest, ‘was to go to one-oh-two
Brantismore Gardens Earl’s Court top flat, to pick
up lady and gentleman for number to be given in
Church Row Hampstead and call there ten-thirty
and take home as directed. Accordingly I went to
Brantismore Gardens and told the porter in the ’all
—it was one of these ’ere flat places with a porter

THE DREAM

169

in livery—that I was there to time waiting. ’E
telephoned up in the usual way. After a bit, lady
and gentleman came out of the house and I went
to the door of the car as I usually do and held it
open. So far nothing out of the ornary. He was
a gentleman in evening dress, like most gentlemen;
she’d got a wrap with fur, and her hair, you know,
was done up nice for an evening party with some¬
thing that sparkled. Quite the lady.’

“ ‘And it was Fanny?’ said Prue.

“Ernest struggled mutely with his subject for
some moments. ‘Not yet, like,’ he said.

“ ‘You mean you didn’t recognise her then?’ said
Matilda.

“ ‘No. But she just looked up at me and seemed
kind of to start and got in. I saw her sort of lean¬
ing forward and looking at me as ’E got in. Fact
is, I didn’t think much of it. I should have for¬
gotten all about it if it ’adn’t been for afterwards.
But when I took them back something happened.
I could see she was looking at me. ... We went
first to one-oh-two Brantismore Gardens again and
then he got out and says to me, “Just wait a bit
here,” and then he helped her out. It sort of seemed
as though she was ’arf-inclined to speak to me and
then she didn’t. But this time I thinks to myself:
“I seen you before, somewhere, my Lady.” Oddly
enough I never thought of Fanny then at all. I
got as near as thinking she was a bit like ’Arry ’ere.
But it never entered my ’ead it might be Fanny.
Strordinary! They went up the steps to the door;
one of these open entrances it is to several flats, and
seemed to have a moment’s confabulation under the

170 THE DREAM

light, looking towards me. Then they went on up
to the flat.’

“ ‘You didn’t know her even then?’ said Prue.

“ ‘ ’E came down the steps quarternour after per¬
haps, looking thoughtful. White wescoat, ’e ’ad, and
coat over ’is arm. Gave me an address near Sloane
Street. Got out and produced his tip, rather on the
large side it was, and stood still kind of thoughtful.
Seemed inclined to speak and didn’t know what to
say. “I’ve an account at the garage,” ’e says, “you’ll
book the car,” and then: “You’re not my usual
driver,” ’e says. “What’s your name?” “Smith,”
I says. “Ernest Smith?” he says. “Yes sir,” I says,
and it was only as I drove off that I asked myself
’Ow the ’Ell—I reely beg your pardon, Miss Good.’

“ ‘Don’t mind me,’ said Matilda. ‘Go on.’

“ ’Ow the Juice d’e know that my name was
Ernest? I nearly ’it a taxi at the corner of Sloane
Square I was so took up puzzling over it. And it
was only about three o’clock in the morning, when
I was lying awake still puzzling over it, that it came
into my ’ead-’

“Ernest assumed the manner of a narrator who
opens out his culminating surprise. ‘—that that
young lady I’d been taken out that evening was-’

“He paused before his climax.

“ ‘Penny,’ whispered Prue.

“ ‘Sister Fanny,’ said Matilda Good.

“ ‘Our Fanny,’ said my mother.

“ ‘No less a 'person than Fanny!’ said my brother
Ernest triumphantly and looked round for the
amazement proper to such a surprise.

“ ‘I thought it was going to be Fenny,’ said Prue.

THE DREAM

171

“ ‘Was she painted up at all?’ asked Matilda.

“ ‘Not nearly so much painted as most of ’em
are,’ said my brother Ernest. ‘Pretty nearly every¬
one paints nowadays. Titled people. Bishops’
ladies. Widows. Everyone. She didn’t strike me
—well, as belonging to the painted sort particularly,
not in the least. Kind of fresh and a little pale—
like Fanny used to be.’

“ ‘Was she dressed like a lady—quiet-like?’

“ ‘Prosperous/ said Ernest. ‘Reely prosperous.
But nothing what you might call extravagant.’

“ ‘And the house you took ’em to—noisy? Sing¬
ing and dancing and the windows open?’

“ ‘It was a perfectly respectable quiet sort of ’ouse.
Blinds down and no row whatever. A private ’ouse.
The people who came to the door to say good night
might ’ave been any gentleman and any lady. I see
the butler. ’E came down to the car. ’E wasn’t
’ired for the evening. ’E was a real butler. The
other guests had a private limousine with an oldish,
careful sort of driver. Whadyou’d speak of as nice
people.’

“ ‘Hardly what you might call being on the streets
of London,’ said Matilda, turning to my mother.
‘What was the gentleman like?’

“ ‘I don’t want to ’ear of ’im,’ said my mother.

“ ‘Dissipated sort of man about town—and a bit
screwed?’ asked Matilda.

“ ‘ ’E was a lot soberer than most dinner fetches,’
said Ernest. ‘I see that when ’e ’andled ’is money.
Lots of ’em—oh! quite ’igh-class people get—’ow
shall I say it?—just a little bit funny. ’Umerous
like. Bit ’nnacurate with the door. ’E wasn’t.

172 THE DREAM

That’s what I can’t make out. . . . And then
there’s this letter.’

“ ‘Then there’s this letter/ said Matilda. ‘You
better read it, Martha.’

“ ‘How did you get that letter?’ asked my mother,
not offering to touch it. ‘You don’t mean to say
she gave you a letter! ’

“ ‘It came last Thursday. By post. It was ad¬
dressed to me, Ernest Smith, Esq., at the Garage.
It’s a curious letter—asking about us. I can’t make
’ead or tail of the whole business. I been thinking
about it and thinking about it. Knowing ’ow set
mother was about Fanny—I ’esitated.’

“His voice died away.

“ ‘Somebody,’ said Matilda in the pause that
followed, ‘had better read that letter/

“She looked at my mother, smiled queerly with
the corners of her mouth down, and then held out
her hand to Ernest.”

§ 4

“It was Matilda who read that letter; my mother’s
aversion for it was all too evident. I can still
remember Matilda’s large red face thrust forward
over the supper things and a little on one side so
as to bring the eye she was using into focus and
get the best light from the feeble little gas-bracket.
Beside her was Prue, with a slack curious face and
a restive glance that went ever and again to my
mother’s face, as a bandsman watches the conduct¬
or’s baton. My mother sat back wuth a defensive
expression on her white face, and Ernest was posed,
wide and large, in a non-committal attitude, os-

THE DREAM 173

tentatiously unable to ‘make ’ead or tail’ of the
affair.

“ ‘Let’s see,’ said Matilda, and took a preliminary-
survey of the task before her. . . .

“ ‘My dear Ernie,’ she says. . . .

“ ‘My dear Ernie:

“ ‘It was wonderful seeing you again. I could

hardly believe it was you even after Mr. — Mr. -

She’s written it and thought better of it and
scratched it out again, Mr. Somebody—Mr. Blank—
had asked your name. I was beginning to fear I’d
lost you all. Where are you living and how are you
getting on? You know I went to France and Italy
for a holiday — lovely, lovely places—and when I
came back I slipped off at Cliffstone because I
wanted to see you all again and couldn’t bear leav¬
ing you as I had done without a word.’

“ ‘She should’ve thought of that before,’ said my
mother.

“ ‘She told me, Mrs. Bradley did, about poor fa¬
ther’s accident and death—the first I heard of it. I
went to his grave in the cemetery and had a good
cry. I couldn’t help it. Poor old Daddy! It was
cruel hard luck getting killed as he did. I put a lot
of flowers on his grave and arranged with Ropes the
Nurseryman about having the grass cut regularly.’

“ ‘And ’im,’ said my mother, ‘lying there! ’E’d ’ve
rather seen ’er lying dead at ’is feet, ’e said, than ’ave
’er the fallen woman she was. And she putting flow¬
ers over ’im. ’Nough to make ’im turn in ’is grave.’

“ ‘But very likely he’s come to think differently

174

THE DREAM

now, Martha,’ said Matilda soothingly. ‘There’s
no knowing really, Martha. Perhaps in heaven they
aren’t so anxious to see people dead at their feet.
Perhaps they get sort of kind up there. Let me see,
—where was I? Ah? —grass cut regularly.

“ ‘Nobody knew where mother and the rest of you
were. Nobody had an address. I went on to London
very miserable, hating to have lost you. Mrs. Burch
said that mother and Prue and Morty had gone to
London to friends, but where she didn’t know. And
then behold! after nearly two years, you bob up
again! It’s too good to be true. Where are the
others? Is Morty getting educated? Prue must be
quite grown up? I would love to see them again
and help them if I can. Dear Ernie, I do want you
to tell mother and all of them that I am quite safe
and happy. I am being helped by a friend. The
one you saw. I’m not a bit fast or bad. I lead a
very quiet life. I have my tiny little flat here and
I read a lot and get educated. I work quite hard.
I’ve passed an examination, Ernie, a university ex¬
amination. I’ve learnt a lot of French and Italian
and some German and about music. I’ve got a
pianola and I’d love to play it to you or Morty. He
was always the one for music. Often and often I
think of you. Tell mother, show her this letter, and
let me know soon about you all and don’t think
unkind things of me. ’Member the good times we
had, Ernie, when we dressed up at Christmas and
father didn’t know us in the shop, and how you
made me a doll’s house for my birthday. Oh! and
cheese pies, Ernie! Cheese pies!’

THE DREAM

175

" 'What were cheese pies?’ asked Matilda.

“ Tt was a sort of silly game we had—passing
people. I forget exactly. But it used to make us
laugh—regular roll about we did.’

" 'Then she gets back to you, Morty,’ said Matilda,

" ‘I’d love to help Morty if he still wants to he
educated. I could now. I could help him a lot. I
suppose he’s not a boy any longer. Perhaps he’s
getting educated himself. Give him my love. Give
mother my love and tell her not to think too badly
of me. Fanny.’

" 'Fanny. Embossed address on her notepaper.
That’s all.’

''Matilda dropped the letter on the table. 'Well?’
she said in a voice that challenged my mother.
'Seems to me that the young woman has struck
one of the Right Sort—the one straight man in ten
thousand . . . seems to have taken care of her al¬
most more than an ordinary husband might’ve done.

. . . What’r you going to do about it, Martha?’

"Matilda collected herself slowly from the table
and leant back in her chair, regarding my mother
with an expression of faintly malevolent irony.”

§ 5

"I turned from Matilda’s quizzical face to my
mother’s drawn intentness.

" ‘Say what you like, Matilda, that girl is living
in sin.’

“ 'Even that isn’t absolutely proved,’ said Matilda.

" 'Why should ’E-?’ my mother began and

stopped.

176

THE DREAM

“ ‘There’s such things as feats of generosity/ said
Matilda. ‘Still-’

“ ‘No,’ said my mother. ‘We don’t want ’er ’elp.
I’d be ashamed to take it. While she lives with
that man-’

“ ‘Apparently she doesn’t. But go on.’

“ ‘Stainted money,’ said my mother. ‘It’s money
she ’as from ’im. It’s the money of a Kep Woman.’

“Her anger kindled. ‘I’d sooner die than touch
’er money.’

“Her sense of the situation found form and ex¬
pression. ‘She leaves ’er ’ome. She breaks ’er
father’s ’eart. Kills ’im, she does. ’E was never
the same man after she’d gone; never the same.
She goes off to shamelessness and luxury. She
makes ’er own brother drive ’er about to ’er shame.’

“ ‘Hardly— makes/ protested Matilda.

“‘Ow was ’E to avoid it? And then she writes
this—this letter. Impudent I call it. Impudent!
Without a word of repentance—not a single word
of repentance. Does she ’ave the decency to say
she’s ashamed of ’erself? Not a word. Owns she’s
still living with a fancy man and means to go on
doing it, glories in it. And offers us ’er kind assist¬
ance—us, what she’s disgraced and shamed. Who
was it that made us leave Cherry Gardens to ’ide
our ’eads from our neighbours in London? ’Er!
And now she’s to come ’ere in ’er moty-car and come
dancing down these steps, all dressed up and painted,
to say a kind word to poor mother. ’Aven’t we
suffered enough about ’er without ’er coming ’ere
to show ’erself off at us? It’s topsy-turvy. Why!
if she come ’ere at all, which I doubt—if she comes

THE DREAM 177

’ere at all she ought to come in sackcloth and ashes
and on ’er bended knees.’

“ ‘She won’t do that, Martha,’ said Matilda Good.

“ ‘Then let ’er keep away. We don’t want the
disgrace of ’er. She’s chosen ’er path and let ’er
abide by it. But ’ere! To come ’ere! ’Ow’r you
going to explain it?’

“ ‘ I’d explain it all right,’ said Matilda unheeded.

“ ‘’Ow am I going to explain it? And here’s
Prue! Here’s this Mr. Pettigrew she’s met at the
Week-day Evening Social and wants to bring to tea!
’Ow’s she going to explain ’er fine lady sister to ’im?
Kep Woman! Yes, Matilda, I say it. It’s the name
for it. That’s what she is. A Kep Woman! Nice
thing to tell Mr. Pettigrew. ’Ere’s my sister, the
Kep Woman! ’E’d be off in a jiffy. Shocked ’e’d
be out of ’is seven senses. ’Ow would Prue ever ’ave
the face to go to the Week-day Evening Social again
after a show-up like that? And Ernie. What’s ’E
going to say about it to the other chaps at the garage
when they throw it up at him that ’is sister’s a Kep
Woman?’

“ ‘Don’t you worry about that, mother,’ said
Ernest gently but firmly. ‘There’s nobody ever
throws anything up against me at the garage any¬
how—and there won’t be. Nohow. Not unless ’E
wants to swaller ’is teeth.’

“ ‘Well, there’s ’Arry. ’E goes to ’is classes, and
what if someone gets ’old of it there? ’Is sister,
a Kep Woman. They’d ’ardly let ’im go on work¬
ing after such a disgrace.’

“ ‘Oh I’d soon-’ I began, following in my

brother’s wake. But Matilda stopped me with a

178

THE DREAM

gesture. Her gesture swept round and held my
mother, who was indeed drawing near the end of
what she had to say.

“ T can see, Martha/ said Matilda, ‘just ’ow you
feel about Fanny. I suppose it’s all natural. Of
course, this letter-’

“She picked up the letter. She pursed her great
mouth and waggled her clumsy head slowly from
side to side. ‘For the life of me I can’t believe
the girl who wrote this is a bad-hearted girl,’ she
said. ‘You’re bitter with her, Martha. You’re
bitter.’

“ ‘After all-’ I began, but Matilda’s hand

stopped me again.

“‘Bitter!’ cried my mother. ‘I know ’er. She
can put on that in’cent air just as though nothing
’ad ’appened and try and make you feel in the
wrong-’

“Matilda ceased to waggle and began to nod.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘I see. But why should Fanny
take the trouble to write this letter, if she hadn’t
a real sort of affection for you all? As though she
need have bothered herself about the lot of you!
You’re no sort of help to her. There’s kindness
in this letter, Martha, and something more than
kindness. Are you going to throw it back at her?
Her and her offers of help? Even if she doesn’t
crawl and repent as she ought to do! Won’t you
even answer her letter?’

“ ‘I won’t be drawn into a correspondence with
’er,’ said my mother. ‘No! So long as she’s a
Kep Woman, she’s no daughter of mine. I wash
my ’ands of ’er. And as for ’er ’Elp! ’Elp indeed!

THE DREAM

179

It’s ’Umbug! If she’d wanted ’elp us she could
have married Mr. Crosby, as fair and honest a man
as any woman could wish for.’

“ ‘So that’s that / said Matilda Good conclusively.

“Abruptly she swivelled her great head round to
Ernest. ‘And what are you going to do, Ernie?
Are you for turning down Fanny? And letting the
cheese pies just drop into the mud of Oblivium,
as the saying goes, and be forgotten for ever and
ever and ever?’

“Ernest sat back, put his hand in his trousers
pocket and remained thoughtful for some moments.
‘It’s orkward,’ he said.

“Matilda offered him no assistance.

“ ‘There’s my Young Lady to consider,’ said
Ernest and flushed an extreme scarlet.

“My mother turned her head sharply and looked
at him. Ernest with a stony expression did not
look at my mother.

“ ‘0—oh!’ said Matilda. ‘Here’s something new.
And who may your Young Lady be, Ernie?’

“ ‘Well, I ’adn’t proposed to discuss ’er ’ere just
yet. So never mind what ’er name is. She’s got
a little millinery business. I’ll say that for ’er.
And a cleverer, nicer girl never lived. We met at
a little dance. Nothing isn’t fixed up yet beyond a
sort of engagement. There’s been presents. Given
’er a ring and so forth. But naturally I’ve never
told ’er anything about Fanny. I ’aven’t discussed
family affairs with ’er much, not so far. Knows
we were in business of some sort and ’ad losses and
father died of an accident; that’s about all. But

180

THE DREAM

Fanny— Fanny’s certainly going to be orkward
to explain. Not that I want to be ’ard on Fanny!'

“ T see,’ said Matilda. She glanced a mute in¬
terrogation at Prue and found her answer in Prue’s
face. Then she picked up the letter again and read
very distinctly: ‘One hundred and two, Brantismore
Gardens, Earl’s Court.’ She read this address slowly
as though she wanted to print it on her memory.
‘Top flat, you said it was, Ernie? . .

“She turned to me. ‘And what are you going
to do, Harry, about all this?’

“ ‘I want to see Fanny for myself,’ I said. ‘I
don’t believe-’

“ ‘ ’Arry,’ said my mother, ‘now—once for all
—I forbid you to go near ’er. I won’t ’ave you
corrupted.’

“ ‘Don’t forbid him, Martha,’ said Matilda. ‘It’s
no use forbidding him. Because he will! Any boy
with any heart and spunk in him would go and
see her after that letter. One hundred and two,
Brantismore Gardens, Earl’s Court,’—she was very
clear with the address—‘it’s not very far from here.’

“ ‘I forbid you to go near ’er, ’Arry,’ my mother
reiterated. And then realising too late the full
importance of Fanny’s letter, she picked it up. ‘I
won’t ’ave this answered. I’ll burn it as it deserves.
And forget about it. Banish it from my mind.
There.’

“And then my mother stood up and making a
curious noise in her throat like the strangulation
of a sob, she put Fanny’s letter into the fire and
took the poker to thrust it into the glow and make
it burn. We all stared in silence as the letter curled

THE DREAM

181

up and darkened, burst into a swift flame and be¬
came in an instant a writhing, agonised, crackling,
black cinder. Then she sat down again, remained
still for a moment, and then after a fierce struggle
with her skirt-pocket dragged out a poor, old, dirty
pocket-handkerchief and began to weep—at first
quietly and then with a gathering passion. The
rest of us sat aghast at this explosion.

“‘You mustn’t go near Fanny, ’Arry; not if
mother forbids,’ said Ernest at last, gently but
firmly.

“Matilda looked at me in grim enquiry.

“ ‘I shall,’ I said, and was in a terror lest the
unmanly tears behind my eyes should overflow.

“ ‘ ’Arry! ’ cried my mother amidst her sobs.
‘You’ll break—you’ll break my heart! First Fanny!
Then you.’

“‘You see!’ said Ernest.

“The storm of her weeping paused as though
she waited to hear my answer. My silly little face
must have been very red by this time and there
was something wrong and uncontrollable about my
voice, but I said what I meant to say. ‘I shall go
to Fanny,’ I said, ‘and I shall just ask her straight
out whether she’s leading a bad life.’

“ ‘And suppose she is?’ asked Matilda.

“ ‘I shall reason with her,’ I said. ‘I shall do
all I can to save her. Yes—even if I have to find
some work that will keep her. . . . She’s my
sister. . . .’

“I wept for a moment or so. ‘I can’t help it,
mother,’ I sobbed. ‘I got to see Fanny!’

“I recovered my composure with an effort.

182

THE DREAM

“ ‘So,’ said Matilda, regarding me, I thought,
with rather more irony and rather less admiration
than I deserved. Then she turned to my mother.
T don’t see that Harry can say fairer than that,’
she said. ‘I think you’ll have to let him see her
after that. He’ll do all he can to save her, he says.
Who knows? He might bring her to repentance.’

“ ‘More likely the other way about,’ said my
mother, wiping her eyes, her brief storm of tears
now over.

“ T can’t ’elp feeling it’s a mistake,’ said Ernest,
Tor ’Arry to go and see ’er.’

“ ‘Well, anyhow don’t give it up because you’ve
forgotten the address, Harry,’ said Matilda, ‘or else
you are done. Let it be your own free-will and
not forgetfulness, if you throw her over. One
hundred and two Brantismore Gardens, Earl’s Court.
You’d better write it down.’

“ ‘One hundred and two—Brantismore Gardens.’

“I went over to my books on the corner table
to do as she advised sternly and resolutely in a fair
round hand on the fly-leaf of Smith’s Principia
Latina.”

§ 6

“My first visit to Fanny’s flat was quite unlike
any of the moving scenes I acted in my mind before¬
hand. I went round about half-past eight when
shop was done on the evening next but one after
Ernest’s revelation. The house seemed to me a
very dignified one and I went up a carpeted stair¬
case to her flat. I rang the bell and she opened
the door herself.

THE DREAM

183

“It was quite evident at once that the smiling
young woman in the doorway had expected to see
someone else instead of the gawky youth who stood
before her, and that for some moments she had not
the slightest idea who I was. Her expression of
radiant welcome changed to a defensive coldness.
‘What do you want, please?’ she said to my silent
stare.

“She had altered very much. She had grown,
though now I was taller than she was, and her wavy
brown hair was tied by a band of black velvet with
a brooch on one side of it, adorned with clear-cut
stones of some sort that shone and twinkled. Her
face and lips had a warmer colour than I remem¬
bered. And she was wearing a light soft greenish-
blue robe with loose sleeves; it gave glimpses of
her pretty neck and throat and revealed her white
arms. She seemed a magically delightful being,
soft and luminous and sweet-scented and altogether
wonderful to a young barbarian out of the London
streets. Her delicacy overawed me. I cleared my
throat. ‘Fanny!’ I said hoarsely, ‘don’t you know
me?’

“She knitted her pretty brows and then came her
old delightful smile. ‘Why! It’s Harry!’ she cried
and drew me into the little hall and hugged and
kissed me. ‘My little brother Harry, grown as big
as I am! How wonderful!’

“Then she went by me and shut the door and
looked at me doubtfully. ‘But why didn’t you write
to me first to say you were coming? Here am I
dying for a talk with you and here’s a visitor who’s

184

THE DREAM

coming to see me. May come in at any moment.
Now what am I to do? Let me see!’

“The little hall in which we stood was bright
with white paint and pretty Japanese pictures. It
had cupboards to hide away coats and hats and an
old oak chest. Several doors opened into it and
two were ajar. Through one I had a glimpse of
a sofa and things set out for coffee, and through the
other I saw a long mirror and a chintz-covered arm¬
chair. She seemed to hesitate between these two
rooms and then pushed me into the former one
and shut the door behind us.

“ ‘You should have written to tell me you were
coming,’ she said. ‘I’m dying to talk to you and
here’s someone coming who’s dying to talk to me.
But never mind! let’s talk all we can. How are
you? Well —I can see that. But are you getting
educated? And mother, how’s mother? What’s
happened to Prue? And is Ernest as hot-tempered
as ever?’

“I attempted to tell her. I tried to give her an
impression of Matilda Good and to hint not too
harshly at my mother’s white implacability. I be¬
gan to tell her of my chemist’s shop and how much
Latin and Chemistry I knew, and in the midst of it
she darted away from me and stood listening.

“It was the sound of a latch-key at the door.

“ ‘My other visitor,’ she said, hesitated a moment
and was out of the room, leaving me to study her
furniture and the coffee machine that bubbled on
the table. She had left the door a little ajar and
I heard all too plainly the sound of a kiss and then

THE DREAM 185

a man’s voice. I thought it was rather a jolly
voice.

“ ‘I’m tired, little Fanny; oh! I’m tired to death.
This new paper is the devil. We’ve started all
wrong. But I shall pull it off. Gods! if I hadn’t
this sweet pool of rest to plunge into, I’d go off
my head! I’d have nothing left to me but head¬
lines. Take my coat; there’s a dear. I smell coffee.’

“I heard a movement as though Fanny had
checked her visitor almost at the door of the room
I was in. I heard her say something very quickly
about a brother.

“ 'Oh, Damn!’ said the man very heartily. ‘Not
another of ’em! How many brothers have you
got, Fanny? Send him away. I’ve only got an
hour altogether, my dear-’

“Then the door closed sharply—Fanny must have
discovered it was ajar—and the rest of the talk was
inaudible.

“Fanny reappeared, a little flushed and bright¬
eyed and withal demure. She had evidently been
kissed again.

“ ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘I hate to ask you to go and
come again, but that other visitor—I’d promised
him first. Do you mind, Harry? I’m longing for
a good time with you, a good long talk. You get
your Sundays, Harry? Well, why not come here
at three on Sunday when I’ll be quite alone and
we’ll have a regular good old tea? Do you mind,
Harry?’

“I said I didn’t. In that flat ethical values
seemed quite different to what they were outside.

186

THE DREAM

“ ‘After all, you did ought to have written first/
said Fanny, ‘instead of just jumping out on me
out of the dark.’

“There was no one in the hall when she showed
me out and not even a hat or coat visible. ‘Give
me a kiss, Harry/ she said and I kissed her very
readily. ‘Quite sure you don’t mind?’ she said
at her door.

“ ‘Not a bit,’ I said. ‘I ought to have written.’

“ ‘Sunday at three,’ she said, as I went down the
carpeted staircase.

“ ‘Sunday at three/ I replied at the bend of the
stairs.

“Downstairs there was a sort of entrance hall
to all the flats with a fire burning in a fire-place and
a man ready to call a cab or taxi for anyone who
wanted one. The prosperity and comfort of it all
impressed me greatly, and I was quite proud to be
walking out of such a fine place. It was only when
I had gone some way along the street that I began
to realise how widely my plans for the evening had
miscarried.

“I had not asked her whether she was living a
bad life or not and I had reasoned with her not at
all. The scenes I had rehearsed in my mind before¬
hand, of a strong and simple and resolute younger
brother saving his frail but lovable sister from
terrible degradations, had indeed vanished altogether
from my mind when her door had opened and she
had appeared. And here I was with the evening
all before me and nothing to report to my family
but the profound difference that lies between

THE DREAM

187

romance and reality. I decided not to report to my
family at all yet, but to go for a very long walk and
think this Fanny business over thoroughly, returning
home when it would be too late for my mother to
cross-examine me and 'draw me out’ at any length.

“I made for the Thames Embankment, for that
afforded uncrowded pavements and the solemnity
and incidental beauty appropriate to a meditative
promenade.

“It is curious to recall now the phases of my
mind that night. At first the bright realities I came
from dominated me: Fanny pretty and prosperous,
kindly and self-assured, in her well-lit, well-fur¬
nished flat, and the friendly and confident voice I
had heard speaking in the hall, asserted themselves
as facts to be accepted and respected. It was de¬
lightful after more than two years of ugly imagina¬
tions to have the glimpse of my dear sister again so
undefeated and loved and cared for and to look
forward to a long time with her on Sunday and a
long confabulation upon all I had done in the mean¬
time and all I meant to do. Very probably these
two people were married after all, but unable for
some obscure reason to reveal the fact to the world.
Perhaps Fanny would tell me as much in the
strictest confidence on Sunday and I could go home
and astonish and quell my mother with the whis¬
pered secret. And even as I developed and cuddled
this idea it grew clear and cold and important in
my mind that they were not married at all, and
the shades of a long-accumulated disapproval
dimmed that first bright impression of Fanny’s little
nest. I felt a growing dissatisfaction with the part

188

THE DREAM

I had played in our encounter. I had let myself
be handled and thrust out as though I had been
a mere boy instead of a brother full of help and
moral superiority. Surely I ought to have said
something, however brief, to indicate our relative
moral positions! I ought to have faced that man
too, the Bad Man, lurking no doubt in the room
with the mirror and the chintz-covered chair. He
had avoided seeing me—because he could not face
me! And from these new aspects of the case I
began to develop a whole new dream of reproach
and rescue. What should I have said to the Bad
Man? ‘And so, Sir, at last we meet-’

“Something like that.

“My imagination began to leap and bound and
soar with me. I pictured the Bad Man, dressed
in that ‘immaculate evening dress’ which my novels
told me marked the deeper and colder depths of
male depravity, cowering under my stream of simple
eloquence. ‘You took her,’ I would say, ‘from our
homely but pure and simple home. You broke her
father’s heart’—yes, I imagined myself saying that!
—‘And what have you made of her?’ I asked.
‘Your doll, your plaything! to be pampered while
the whim lasts and then to be cast aside!’ Or—
‘tossed aside’?

“I decided ‘tossed aside’ was better.

“I found myself walking along the Embankment,
gesticulating and uttering such things as that.”

“But you knew better?” said Firefly. “Even then.”

“I knew better. But that was the way our minds
worked in the ancient days.”

THE DREAM

189

§ 7

“But,” said Sarnac, “my second visit to Fanny,
like my first, was full of unexpected experiences
and unrehearsed effects. The carpet on the pleasant
staircase seemed to deaden down my moral tramp-
lings, and when the door opened and I saw my dear
Fanny again, friendly and glad, I forgot altogether
the stern interrogations with which that second
interview was to have opened. She pulled my hair
and kissed me, took my hat and coat, said I had
grown tremendously and measured herself against
me, pushed me into her bright little sitting-room,
where she had prepared such a tea as I had never
seen before, little ham sandwiches, sandwiches of a
delightful stuff called Gentleman’s Relish, straw¬
berry jam, two sorts of cake, and little biscuits to
fill in any odd corners. ‘You are a dear to come and
see me, Harry. But I had a sort of feeling that
whatever happened you would come along.’

“ ‘We two always sort of hung together,’ I said.

“ ‘Always,’ she agreed. ‘I think mother and Ernie
might have written me a line. Perhaps they will
later. Ever seen an electric kettle, Harry? This
is one. And you put that plug in there.’

“ ‘I know,’ I said, and did as I was told. ‘There’s
resistances embedded in the coating. I’ve been
doing some electricity and chemistry. Council
classes. Six’r seven subjects altogether. And
there’s a shop-window in Tothill Street full of such
things.’

“ ‘I expect you know all about them,’ she said.
‘I expect you’ve learnt all sorts of sciences,’ and

190

THE DREAM

so we came to the great topic of what I was learning
and what I was going to do.

“It was delightful to talk to someone who really
understood the thirst for knowledge that possessed
me. I talked of myself and my dreams and ambi¬
tions, and meanwhile, being a growing youth, my
arm swept like a swarm of locusts over Fanny’s
wonderful tea. Fanny watched me with a smile on
her face and steered me with questions towards
the things she most wanted to know. And when we
had talked enough for a time she showed me how
to play her pianola and I got a roll of Schumann
that Mr. Plaice had long ago made familiar to me
and had the exquisite delight of playing it over for
myself. These pianolas were quite easy things to
manage, I found; in a little while I was already
playing with conscious expression.

“Fanny praised me for my quickness, cleared
her tea-things away while I played, and then came
and sat beside me and listened and talked and we
found w T e had learnt quite a lot about music since
our parting. We both thought great things of Bach,
—whom I found I was calling quite incorrectly
Batch—and Mozart, who also had to be pronounced
a little differently. And then Fanny began to ques¬
tion me about the work I wanted to do in the world.
'You mustn’t stay with that old chemist much
longer,’ she declared. How would I like to do some
sort of work that had to do with books, bookselling
or helping in a library or printing and publishing
books and magazines? 'You’ve never thought of
writing things?’ asked Fanny. ‘People do.’

“ ‘I made some verses once or twice,’ I confessed,

THE DREAM 191

‘and wrote a letter to the Daily News about temper¬
ance. But they didn’t put it in.’

“ ‘Have you ever wanted to write?’

“ ‘What, books? Like Arnold Bennett? Rather!’

“ ‘But you didn’t quite know how to set about it.’

“ ‘It’s difficult to begin,’ I said, as though that
was the only barrier.

“ ‘You ought to leave that old chemist’s shop,’
she repeated. ‘If I were to ask people I know and
found out some better sort of job for you, Harry,
would you take it?’

“ ‘Rather!’ said I.”

‘Why not altogether?” interrupted Firefly.

“Oh! we used to say Rather,” said Sarnac. “It
was artistic understatement. But you realise how
dreadfully I lapsed from all my preconceived notions
about Fanny and myself. We talked the whole
evening away. We had a delightful cold picnic sup¬
per in a pretty little dining-room with a dresser, and
Fanny showed me how to make a wonderful salad
wflth onions very finely chopped and white wine
and sugar in the dressing. And afterwards came
some more of that marvel, the pianola, and then
very reluctantly I took my leave. And when I found
myself in the streets again I had once more my
former sense of having dropped abruptly from one
world into another, colder, bleaker, harder, and with
entirely different moral values. Again I felt the same
reluctance to go straight home and have my evening-
dimmed and destroyed by a score of pitiless ques¬
tions. And when at last I did go home I told a lie.
‘Fanny’s got a pretty place and she’s as happy as
can be,’ I said. ‘I’m not quite sure, but from what

192 THE DREAM

she said, I believe that man’s going to marry her
before very long.’

“My cheeks and ears grew hot under my mother’s
hostile stare.

“ ‘Did she tell you that?’

“ ‘Practically,’ I lied. ‘I kind of got it out of her.’

“ ‘But ’e’s married already!’ said my mother.

“ ‘I believe there is something,’ I said.

“ ‘Soviething!’ said my mother scornfully. ‘She’s
stolen another woman’s man. ’E belongs to ’er
—for ever. No matter what there is against ’er.
“Whomsoever God Hath Joined, Let No Man Put
Asunder!”—that’s what I was taught and what I
believe. ’E may be older; ’e may have led her
astray, but while she and ’e harbour together the
sin is ’ers smutch as ’is. Did you see ’im?’

“ ‘He wasn’t there.’

“ ‘ ’Adn’t the face. That’s so much to their credit.
And are you going there again?’

“ ‘I’ve kind of promised-’

“ ‘It’s against my wishes, ’Arry. Every time you
go near Fanny, ’Arry, you disobey me. Mark that.
Let’s be plain about that, once and for all.’

“I felt mulish. ‘She’s my sister,’ I said.

“ ‘And I’m your mother. Though nowadays
mothers are no more than dirt under their children’s
feet. Marry ’er indeed! Why should ’e? Likely.
’E’ll marry the next one. Come, Prue, take that bit
of coal off the fire and we’ll go up to bed.’ ”

§ 8

“And now,” said Sarnac, “I must tell you of the
queer business organisation of Thunderstone House

THE DREAM

193

and the great firm of Crane & Newberry, for whom,
at Fanny’s instance, I abandoned Mr. Humberg and
his gold-labelled bottles of nothingness. Crane &
Newberry were publishers of newspapers, magazines
and books, and Thunderstone House was a sort of
fountain of printed paper, spouting an unending
wash of reading matter into the lives of the English
people.

“I am talking of the world two thousand years
ago,” said Sarnac. “No doubt you have all been
good children and have read your histories duly, but
at this distance in time things appear very much
foreshortened, and changes that occupied lifetimes
and went on amidst dense clouds of doubt, mis¬
understanding and opposition seem to be the easiest
and most natural of transitions. We were all taught
that the scientific method came into human affairs
first of all in the world of material things, and later
on in the matters of psychology and human relation¬
ship, so that the large-scale handling of steel, and
railways, automobiles, telegraphs, flying machines
and all the broad material foundations of the new
age were in existence two or three generations before
social, political and educational ideas and methods
were modified in correspondence with the new neces¬
sities these things had created. There was a great
unanticipated increase in the trade and population
of the world and much confusion and conflict, vio¬
lent social stresses and revolutions and great wars,
before even the need of a scientific adjustment of
human relationships was recognised. It is easy
enough to learn of such things in general terms but
hard to explain just what these processes of blind

194

THE DREAM

readjustment meant in anxiety, suffering and distress
to the countless millions who found themselves born
into the swirl of this phase of change. As I look
back to that time in which I lived my other life I
am reminded of a crowd of people in one of my old
Pimlico fogs. No one had any vision of things as
a whole; everybody was feeling his way slowly and
clumsily from one just perceptible thing to another.
And nearly everybody was uneasy and disposed to
be angry.

“It is clear beyond question to us now, that the
days of illiterate drudges were already past in the
distant nineteenth century, for power-machinery had
superseded them. The new world, so much more
complicated and dangerous, so much richer and
ampler, was a world insisting upon an educated
population, educated intellectually and morally.
But in those days these things were not at all clear,
and it was grudgingly and insufficiently that access
to knowledge and enlightenment was given by the
learned and prosperous classes to the rapidly accu¬
mulating masses of the population. They insisted
that it should be done by special channels and in a
new and different class of school. I have told you of
what passed for my education, reading and writing,
rudimentary computations, ‘jogfry’ and so forth.
That sort of process, truncated by employment at
thirteen or fourteen, when curiosity and interest
were just beginning to awaken, was as far as educa¬
tion had gone for the bulk of the common men and
women in the opening years of the twentieth cen¬
tury. It had produced a vast multitude of people,
just able to read, credulous and uncritical and piti-

THE DREAM

195

fully curious to learn about life and things, pitifully
wanting to see and know. As a whole the com¬
munity did nothing to satisfy the vague aspirations
of those half-awakened swarms; it was left to ‘pri¬
vate enterprise’ to find what profits it could in their
dim desires. A number of great publishing busi¬
nesses arose to trade upon the new reading public
that this ‘elementary’ education, as we called it, had
accumulated.

“In all ages people have wanted stories about life.
The young have always wanted to be told about the
stage on which they are beginning to play their
parts, to be shown the chances and possibilities of
existence, vividly and dramatically, so that they
may imagine and anticipate their own reactions.
And even those who are no longer youthful have
always been eager to supplement their experiences
and widen their judgment by tales and histories and
discussions. There has been literature since there
has been writing, since indeed there was enough
language for story-telling and reciting. And always
literature has told people what their minds were
prepared to receive, searching for what it should
tell rather in the mind and expectation of the hearer
or reader—who was the person who paid—than in
the unendowed wildernesses of reality. So that the
greater part of the literature of every age has been
a vulgar and ephemeral thing interesting only to
the historian and psychologist of later times because
of the light it threw upon the desires and imagina¬
tive limitations of its generation. But the popular
literature of the age in which Harry Mortimer Smith
was living was more abundant, more cynically insin-

196

THE DREAM

cere, lazy, cheap and empty than anything that the
world had ever seen before.

“You would accuse me of burlesque if I were to
tell you the stories of the various people who built
up immense fortunes by catering for the vague needs
of the new reading crowds that filled the hypertro¬
phied cities of the Atlantic world. There was a
certain Newnes of whom legend related that one
day after reading aloud some item of interest to
his family he remarked, T call that a regular tit-bit.’
From that feat of nomenclature he went on to the
idea of a weekly periodical full of scraps of interest,
cuttings from books and newspapers and the like.
A hungry multitude, eager and curious, was ready
to feed greedily on such hors d’oeuvre. So Tit-Bits
came into existence, whittled from a thousand
sources by an industrious and not too expensive
staff, and Newnes became a man of wealth and a
baronet. His first experiment upon the new public
encouraged him to make a number of others. He
gave it a monthly magazine full of short stories
drawn from foreign sources. At first its success was
uncertain, and then a certain Dr. Conan Doyle rose
to fame in it and carried it to success with stories
about crime and the detection of crime. Every
intelligent person in those days, everyone indeed
intelligent or not, was curious about the murders
and such-like crimes which still abounded. Indeed,
there could have been no more fascinating and de¬
sirable subject for us; properly treated such cases
illuminated the problems of law, training and control
in our social welter as nothing else could have done.
The poorest people bought at least a weekly paper

THE DREAM

197

in order to quicken their wits over murder mysteries
and divorces, driven by an almost instinctive need
to probe motives and judge restraints. But Conan
Doyle’s stories had little of psychology in them; he
tangled a skein of clues in order to disentangle it
again, and his readers forgot the interest of the
problem in the interest of the puzzle.

“Hard upon the heels of Newnes came a host of
other competitors, among others a certain Arthur
Pearson and a group of brothers Harmsworth who
rose to great power and wealth from the beginning
of a small weekly paper called Answers, inspired
originally by the notion that people liked to read
other people’s letters. You will find in the histories
how two of these Harmsworths, men of great thrust
and energy, became Lords of England and promi¬
nent figures in politics, but I have to tell of them
now simply to tell you of the multitude of papers
and magazines they created to win the errand-boy’s
guffaw, the heart of the factory girl, the respect of
the aristocracy and the confidence of the nouveau
riche. It was a roaring factory of hasty printing.
Our own firm at Thunderstone House was of an older
standing than these Newnes, Pearson, Harmsworth
concerns. As early as the eighteenth century the
hunger for knowledge had been apparent, and a
certain footman turned publisher, named Dodsley,
had produced a book of wisdom called the Young
Man’s Companion. Our founder, Crane, had done
the same sort of thing in Early Victorian times. He
had won his way to considerable success with a
Home Teacher in monthly parts and with Crane’s
Circle of the Sciences and a weekly magazine and so

198

THE DREAM

forth. His chief rivals had been two firms called
Cassell’s and Routledge’s, and for years, though he
worked upon a smaller capital, he kept well abreast
of them. For a time the onrush of the newer popu¬
lar publishers had thrust Crane and his contempo¬
raries into the background and then, reconstructed
and reinvigorated by a certain Sir Peter Newberry,
the old business had won its way back to prosperity,
publishing a shoal of novelette magazines and cheap
domestic newspapers for women, young girls and
children, reviving the Home Teacher on modern
lines with a memory training system and a Guide
to Success by Sir Peter Newberry thrown in, and
even launching out into scientific handbooks of a
not too onerous sort.

“It is difficult for you to realise,” said Sarnac,
“what a frightful lot of printed stuff there was in
that old world. It w r as choked with printed rubbish
just as it was choked with human rubbish and a
rubbish of furniture and clothing and every sort of
rubbish; there was too much of the inferior grades
of everything. And good things incredibly rare!
You cannot imagine how delightful it is for me to
sit here again, naked and simple, talking plainly
and nakedly in a clear and beautiful room. The
sense of escape, of being cleansed of unnecessary
adhesions of any sort, is exquisite. We read a book
now and then and talk and make love naturally and
honestly and do our work and thought and research
with well-aired, well-fed brains, and we live with all
our senses and abilities taking a firm and easy grip
upon life. But stress was in the air of the twentieth
century. Those who had enough courage fought

THE DREAM

199

hard for knowledge and existence, and to them we
sold our not very lucid or helpful Home Teacher and
our entirely base Guide to Success; but great multi¬
tudes relaxed their hold upon life in a way that is
known now only to our morbid psychologists. They
averted their attention from reality and gave them¬
selves up to reverie. They went about the world
distraught in a day-dream, a day-dream that they
were not really themselves, but beings far nobler
and more romantic, or that presently things would
change about them into a dramatic scene centring
about themselves. These novelette magazines and
popular novels that supplied the chief part of the
income of Crane & Newberry, were really helps to
reverie—mental drugs. Sunray, have you ever read
any twentieth-century novelettes?”

“One or two,” said Sunray. “It’s as you say. I
suppose I have a dozen or so. Some day you shall
see my little collection.”

“Very likely ours —half of them,—Crane & New¬
berry’s I mean. It will be amusing to see them
again. The great bulk of this reverie material was
written for Crane & Newberry by girls and women
and by a type of slack imaginative men. These
‘authors,’ as we called them, lived scattered about
London or in houses on the country-side, and they
sent their writings by post to Thunderstone House,
where we edited them in various ways and put the
stuff into our magazines and books. Thunderstone
House was a great rambling warren of a place open¬
ing out of Tottenham Court Road, with a yard into
which huge lorries brought rolls of paper and from
which vans departed with our finished products. It

200

THE DREAM

was all a-quiver with the roar and thudding of the
printing machinery. I remember very vividly to
this day how I went there first, down a narrow road¬
way out of the main thoroughfare, past a dingy
public-house and the stage door of a theatre.”

“What were you going to do—pack up books?
Or run errands?” asked Radiant.

“I was to do what I could. Very soon I was on
the general editorial staff.”

“Editing popular knowledge?”

“Yes.”

“But why did they want an illiterate youngster
like yourself at Thunderstone House?” asked Radi¬
ant. “I can understand that this work of instruct¬
ing and answering the first crude questions of the
new reading classes was necessarily a wholesale
improvised affair, but surely there were enough
learned men at the ancient universities to do all the
editing and instructing that was needed!”

Sarnac shook his head. “The amazing thing is
that there weren’t,” he said. “They produced men
enough of a sort but they weren’t the right sort.”

His auditors looked puzzled.

“The rank-and-file of the men they sent out
labelled M.A. and so forth from Oxford and Cam¬
bridge were exactly like those gilt-lettered jars in
Mr. Humberg’s shop, that had nothing in them but
stale water. The pseudo-educated man of the older
order couldn’t teach, couldn’t write, couldn’t explain.
He was pompous and patronising and prosy; timid
and indistinct in statement, with no sense of the
common need or the common quality. The pro¬
moted office-boy, these new magazine and newspaper

THE DREAM

201

people discovered, was brighter and better at the
job, comparatively modest and industrious, eager
to know things and impart things. The editors of
our periodicals, the managers of our part publica¬
tions and so forth were nearly all of the office-boy
class, hardly any of them, in the academic sense,
educated. But many of them had a sort of educa¬
tional enthusiasm and all of them a boldness that
the men of the old learning lacked. . .

Sarnac reflected. “In Britain at the time I am
speaking about—and in America also—there were
practically two educational worlds and two tradi¬
tions of intellectual culture side by side. There was
all this vast fermenting hullabaloo of the new pub¬
lishing, the new press, the cinema theatres and so
forth, a crude mental uproar arising out of the new
elementary schools of the nineteenth century, and
there was the old aristocratic education of the seven¬
teenth and eighteenth centuries, which had picked
up its tradition from the Augustan age of Rome.
They didn’t mix. On the one hand were these office-
boy fellows with the intellectual courage and vigour
—oh! of Aristotle and Plato, whatever the quality
of their intellectual equipment might be; on the
other the academic man, affectedly Grecian, like
the bought and sold learned man of the days of
Roman slavery. He had the gentility of the house¬
hold slave; he had the same abject respect for
patron, prince and patrician; he had the same metic¬
ulous care in minor matters, and the same fear of
uncharted reality. He criticised like a slave, sneer¬
ing and hinting, he quarrelled like a slave, despised
all he dared despise with the eagerness of a slave.

202

THE DREAM

He was incapable of serving the multitude. The
new reading-crowd, the working masses, the ‘democ¬
racy’ as we used to call it, had to get its knowledge
and its wisdom without him.

“Crane, our founder, had had in his day some
inkling of the educational function such businesses
as his were bound to serve in the world, but Sir
Peter Newberry had been a hard tradesman, intent
only on recovering the prosperity that the newer
popular publishers had filched away from our firm.
He was a hard-driving man; he drove hard, he paid
in niggardly fashion and he succeeded. He had been
dead now for some years and the chief shareholder
and director of the firm was his son Richard. He
was nicknamed the Sun; I think because someone
had quoted Shakespeare about the winter of our
discontent being made summer by this Sun of York.
He was by contrast a very genial and warming per¬
son. He was acutely alive to the moral responsibility
that lay behind the practical irresponsibility of a
popular publisher. If anything, he drove harder
than his father, but he paid generously; he tried to
keep a little ahead of the new public instead of a
little behind; the times moved in his favour and he
succeeded even more than his father had done. I
had been employed by Crane & Newberry for many
weeks before I saw him, but in the first office I
entered in Thunderstone House I saw the evidences
of his personality in certain notices upon the wall.
They were printed in clear black letters on cards
and hung up. It was his device for giving the house
a tone of its own.

“I remember ‘We lead; the others imitate,’ and

THE DREAM

203

‘If you are in any doubt about its being too good
put it in.’ A third was: ‘If a man doesn’t know
what you know that’s no reason for waiting as if
he was an all-round fool. Rest assured there is
something he knows better than you do.’ ”

§ 9

“It took me some time to get from the yard of
Thunderstone House to the office in which these
inscriptions were displayed. Fanny had told me to
ask for Mr. Cheeseman, and when I had discovered
and entered the doorway up a flight of steps, which
had at first been masked by two large vans, I made
this demand of an extremely small young lady en¬
closed in a kind of glass cage. She had a round face
and a bright red button of a nose. She was engaged,
I realised slowly, in removing a foreign stamp from
a fragment of envelope by licking the back of the
paper. She did not desist from this occupation but
mutely asked my business with her eyes.

“ ‘Oran-amoiment?’ she asked, still licking.

“ ‘Pardon?’

“ ‘Oran-amoiment?’

“ ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I don’t get it quite.’

“ ‘Mus’ be deaf,’ she said, putting down the stamp
and taking a sufficient breath for slow loud speech.
‘ ’Ave you gottonappointment?’

“‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Yes. I was told to come here
to-day and see Mr. Cheeseman between ten and
twelve.’

She resumed her struggle with the stamp for a
time. ‘S’pose you don’t c’lect stamps?’ she asked.
‘ ’Sintresting ’obby. Mr. Cheeseman’s written a

204

THE DREAM

little ’andbook about it. Looking for a job, I sup¬
pose? May ’ave to wait a bit. Will you fill up
that bit of paper there? Formality we ’ave to insist
on. Pencil. . . .’

“The paper demanded my name and my business
and I wrote that the latter was 'literary employ¬
ment.’

“ ‘Lordy,’ said the young lady when she read
it. ‘I thought you was in for the ware’ouse. I say,
Florence,’ she said to another considerably larger
girl who had appeared on the staircase, 'look at ’im.
’E’s after litry emplyment.’

“'Cheek!’ said the second young lady after one
glance at me, and sat down inside the glass box with
a piece of chewing gum and a novelette just pub¬
lished by the firm. The young lady with the button
nose resumed her stamp damping. They kept me
ten minutes before the smaller one remarked: ‘Spose
I better take this up to Mr. Cheeseman, Flo,’ and
departed with my form.

“She returned after five minutes or so. 'Mr.
Cheeseman says ’E can see you now for one minute,’
she said, and led the way up a staircase and along a
passage that looked with glass windows into a print¬
er’s shop and down a staircase and along a dark
passage to a small apartment with an office table,
one or two chairs, and bookshelves covered with
paper-covered publications. Out of this opened
another room, and the door was open. 'You better
sit down here,’ said the young lady with the button
nose.

‘"That Smith?’ asked a voice. 'Come right in.’

THE DREAM 205

“I went in, and the young lady with the button
nose vanished from my world.

“I discovered a gentleman sunken deeply in an
arm-chair before a writing-table, and lost in con¬
templation of a row of vivid drawings which were
standing up on a shelf against the wall of the room.
He had an intensely earnest, frowning, red face, a
large broad mouth intensely compressed, and stiff
black hair that stood out from his head in many
directions. His head was slightly on one side and
he was chewing the end of a lead-pencil. ‘Don’t see
it/ he whispered. ‘Don’t see it.’ I stood awaiting
his attention. ‘Smith,’ he murmured, still not look¬
ing at me, ‘Harry Mortimer Smith. Smith, were
you by any chance educated at a Board School?’

“ ‘Yessir,’ I said.

“ ‘I hear you have literary tastes.’

“ ‘Yessir.’

“ ‘Then come here and stand by me and look at
these damned pictures there. Did you ever see such
stuff?’

“I stood by his side but remained judiciously
silent. The drawings I now perceived were designs
for a magazine cover. Upon all of them appeared
the words ‘The New World’ in very conspicuous
lettering. One design was all flying machines and
steamships and automobiles; two others insisted
upon a flying machine; one showed a kneeling loin-
clothed man saluting the rising sun—which however
rose behind him. Another showed a planet earth
half illuminated, and another was simply a workman
going to his work in the dawn.

“ ‘Smith,’ said Mr. Cheeseman, ‘it’s you’ve got to

206

THE DREAM

buy this magazine, not me. Which of these covers
do you prefer? It’s your decision. Fiat experimen-
tum in corpore vili!

“ ‘Meaning me, Sir?’ I said brightly.

“His bristle eyebrows displayed a momentary
surprise. ‘I suppose we’re all fitted with the same
tags nowadays,’ he remarked. ‘Which do you find
most attractive?’

“ ‘Those aeroplane things, Sir, seem to me to be
shoving it a bit too hard,’ I said.

“ ‘H’m,’ said Mr. Cheeseman. ‘That’s what the
Sun says. You wouldn’t buy on that?’

“ ‘I don’t think so, Sir. It’s been done too much.’

“ ‘How about that globe?’

“ ‘Too like an Atlas, Sir.’

“ ‘Aren’t geography and travel interesting?’

“ ‘They are, Sir, but somehow they aren’t attrac¬
tive.’

“ ‘Interesting but not attractive. H’m. Out of
the mouths of babes and sucklings. ... So it’s
going to be that labour chap there in the dawn.
You’d buy that, eh?’

“ ‘Is this going to be a magazine about inventions
and discoveries and progress, Sir?’

“ ‘Exactly.’

“ ‘Well, the Dawn’s good, Sir, but I don’t think
that sort of Labour Day Cartoon man is going to
be very attractive. Looks rheumatic and heavy, Sir.
Why not cut him out and keep the dawn?’

“ ‘Bit too like a slice of ham, Smith—thin pink
streaks.’

“I was struck by an idea. ‘Suppose, Sir, you kept
that dawn scene and made it a bit earlier in the

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207

year. Buds on the trees, Sir. And perhaps snowy
mountains, rather cold and far off. And then you
put a hand right across it—just a big hand—point¬
ing, Sir.’

“ ‘Pointing up?’ said Mr. Cheeseman.

“ ‘No, Sir, pointing forward and just a little up.
It would sort of make one curious.’

“ ‘It would. A woman’s hand.’

“ ‘Just a hand I think, Sir.’

“ ‘You’d buy that?’

“ ‘I’d jump at it, Sir, if I had the money.’

“Mr. Cheeseman reflected for some moments,
chewing his pencil serenely. Then he spat out small
bits of pencil over his desk and spoke. ‘What
you say, Smith, is exactly what I’ve been thinking.
Exactly. It’s very curious.’ He pressed a bell-push
on his desk and a messenger girl appeared. ‘Ask
Mr. Prelude to come here. ... So you think you’d
like to come into Thunderstone House, Smith. I’m
told you know a little about science already. Learn
more. Our public’s moving up to science. I’ve got
some books over there I want you to read and pick
out anything you find interesting.’

“ ‘You’ll be able to find me a job, Sir?’ I said.

“ ‘I’ve got to find you a job all right. Orders is
orders. You’ll be able to sit in that room there. . . .’

“We were interrupted by the arrival of Mr. Pre¬
lude. He was a tall, thin, cadaverous man with a
melancholy expression.

“ ‘Mr. Prelude,’ said Mr. Cheeseman, waving his
arm at the cover sketches, ‘this stuff won’t do. It’s
—it’s too banal. We want something fresher, some¬
thing with a touch of imagination. What I want to

208

THE DREAM

see on the cover is—well, say a dawn—a very calm
and simple scene, mostly colour, mountain range far
away just flushed with sunrise, valley blue and still,
high streamer clouds touched with pink. See? Trees
perhaps in the foreground—just budding—spring
motij and morning motij. See? All a little faint
and backgroundy. Then a big hand and wrist across
the page pointing at something, something high and
far away. See?’

“He surveyed Mr. Prelude with the glow of
creative enthusiasm on his face. Mr. Prelude looked
disapproval. ‘The Sun will like that,’ he said.

“ ‘It’s the goods,’ said Mr. Cheeseman.

“ ‘Why not those flying machines?’

“ ‘Why not midges?’ asked Mr. Cheeseman.

“Mr. Prelude shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’ve got
no use for a magazine on progress without a flying
machine or a Zeppelin,’ he said. ‘Still—it’s your
affair.’

“Mr. Cheeseman looked a little dashed by his
colleague’s doubt, but he held to his idea. ‘We’ll
get a sketch made,’ he said. ‘How about Wilkinson?’

“They discussed some unknown Wilkinson as a
possible cover designer. Then Mr. Cheeseman turned
to me. ‘By the by, here’s a youngster we’ve got to
make use of, Prelude. We don’t know what he can
do, but he seems intelligent. I thought we’d use
him to sift some of those scientific books. What he
likes, they’ll like. I can’t read that stuff. I’m too
busy.’

“Mr. Prelude surveyed me. ‘You never know
what you can do till you try,’ he said. ‘Do you
know anything of science?’

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209

“ ‘Not very much/ I said. ‘But I’ve done some
physiography and chemistry and a little geology.
And read a lot.’

“ ‘You don’t want to know very much,’ said Mr.
Prelude. ‘You’re better without it here. Makes
you High-Brow. High-Brow goes to tens of thou¬
sands, but Crane & Newberry go to hundreds of
thousands. Not that our brows aren’t rising some
in this establishment. Educational and improving,
we’re going to be. So far as is consistent with our
profits. See that notice ,—We leadf All the same,
Cheeseman,’ said Mr. Prelude, ‘the thing that has
sold, the thing that sells and the thing that’s going
to sell, is the magazine with a pretty girl on the
cover—and the less costume the better. Consistent
with decency. Now here—what’s your name?’

“ ‘Smith, Sir.’

“ ‘Smith. And here’s all these covers on the book¬
stall. And then I produce this. Which does he buy?’

“This was the cover of the summer number of
Newberry’s Story Magazine, on which two young
ladies in skin-tight bathing dresses disported them¬
selves on a sandy beach.

“ ‘Smith goes for this,’ said Mr. Prelude trium¬
phantly.

“I shook my head.

“ ‘You mean to say that isn’t attractive?’ said
Mr. Cheeseman, turning in his chair and pointing
with his well-chewed pencil.

“I reflected.

“ ‘There’s never anything about them inside,’ I
said.

“‘Got you there, Prelude!’ said Mr. Cheeseman.

210

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“ ‘Not a bit. He bought six or seven before he
found that out. And most of ’em forgot about it
when they read inside.’ ”

§ 10

“I found my introduction to Thunderstone House
far less terrifying than I had anticipated. It was
gratifying to have come so near to what Mr. Cheese-
man had thought about the magazine cover, and
there were presently other very reassuring coinci¬
dences of the same sort. I was immediately inter¬
ested in the editorial and publishing work that was
going on about me, and my mind took one of those
forward strides that are characteristic of adolescence.
I was still a boy when I left Mr. Humberg; I had
not been with Crane & Newberry six weeks before
I perceived that I was a capable and responsible
young man. I began to form opinions rapidly, to
write with confidence; even my handwriting sud¬
denly grew up from a careless or over-careful boyish
scrawl to a consistent and characteristic script. I
began to think about the clothes I was wearing and
of the impression I made upon other people.

“In quite a little time I was writing short contri¬
butions to some of our minor weeklies and monthlies
and suggesting articles and ‘features’ as we called
them to Mr. Cheeseman. The eighteen shillings a
week at which I started went up in a series of jerks
to three pounds, which was quite a big salary in
those days for a youngster not yet eighteen. Fanny
took the keenest interest in my work and displayed
an extraordinary understanding of its conditions.
She seemed to know all about Mr. Cheeseman and

THE DREAM 211

Mr. Prelude and the rest of my colleagues directly
I mentioned them.

"One day I was working in the room next to Mr.
Cheeseman’s with another youngster called Wilkins
at a rather odd little job. One of the authors our
firm employed had written a long story for the Story
Reader’s Paradise, and it had been set up by the
printers and passed for press before it was discovered
that in a careless moment she had given her chief
villain the name of a very prominent lawyer who
unhappily also had a country house in a village
almost identical in name with the corresponding
village in the story. The prominent lawyer might
see fit to consider this use of his name as libellous
and make trouble for us. So Wilkins and I were
going through two sets of proofs, one to check the
other, and we were changing the name of the promi¬
nent lawyer to an entirely different one whenever
it occurred. To brighten the task we had made a
game of it. Each one raced down his galley proof
and called the name of ‘Reginald Flake’ whenever
he found it and scored a point for every name he
called first. I was some points up when I heard a
voice in the passage that seemed oddly familiar to
me. ‘They’re all spread out on my desk, sir, if you
like to come into my room,’ I heard Mr. Cheeseman
say.

“ ‘Fay-nits,’ said Wilkins. ‘It’s the Sun.’

“I turned round as the door opened and saw Mr.
Cheeseman holding the door open for a good-looking
youngish man, with rather handsome regular fea¬
tures and a sort of bang of brown hair over his
forehead. He wore a pair of very round large spec-

212

THE DREAM

tacles with glasses tinted a faint yellow colour. He
met my eyes and an expression of partial recognition
came into his and faded again. Either he recognised
me or he recognised a resemblance in me. He fol¬
lowed Mr. Cheeseman across the room. Then he
turned sharply.

“ ‘Of course/ he said smiling and returning a step
or two towards me. ‘You must be young Smith.
How are you getting on here?’

“ ‘I’m working for Mr. Cheeseman mostly/ I said
standing up.

“He turned to Mr. Cheeseman.

“‘Very satisfactory, sir. Quick, interested; he’ll
do well here.’

“ ‘I’m glad to hear it—very glad. Everyone has
a chance here and there’s no favours. No favours.
The best man does the job. Glad to see you among
the directors whenever you care to come up to us,
Smith.’

“ ‘I’ll do my best, Sir.’

“He hesitated, smiled again in a very friendly way
and went into Mr. Cheeseman’s room. . . .

“ ‘Where are we?’ I said. ‘Middle of galley 32?
Score, 22-29.’

“ ‘How d’you know ’imf’ asked Wilkins in a fierce
undertone.

“ ‘I don’t know him,’ I said, suddenly hot and
flushed. ‘I’ve never seen him before.’

“ ‘Well, he knew you.’

“ ‘He’s heard about me.’

“ ‘Who from?’

“ ‘How the deuce should I know?’ I asked with
needless heat.

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213

“ ‘Oh!’ said Wilkins and reflected. ‘But-’

“He glanced at my troubled face and said no more.
“But at the game of ‘Reginald Flake’ he over¬
hauled me and beat me at the end of the book,
67-42.”

§ 11

“I concealed altogether from my mother the share
that Fanny had had in getting me my new job and
all the opportunities it carried with it in Thunder-
stone House, and so it was possible for her to find
some pride and satisfaction in my increasing pros¬
perity. I was presently able to double and then still
further to increase my contribution to the household
expenses, and I exchanged my attic, which was
handed over to Prue for her very own, for the room
which had once sheltered the old Moggeridges. It
was rearranged as a bed-sitting room for me, and
soon I had first one and then several shelves full of
books and a writing-desk of my own.

“And also I concealed from my mother, for there
was no use in distressing her, the frequency of my
visits to Fanny. We began to make little excursions
together, for Fanny, I discovered, was often very
lonely. Newberry was a very busy man, and often
he could not come near her for ten days or a fort¬
night, and although she had some women friends,
and classes and lectures, there were gaps often of
several days when she would have had no one to
speak to but the servant who came in daily to her,
if it had not been for me. But all this companioning
of Fanny I tried to hide from my mother, though
now and then her suspicions stabbed my falsehoods.

214

THE DREAM

Ernie and Prue, however, were able to follow the
calls of love unhampered by the family shame, and
presently they were both engaged and his young-
lady and her young man were brought to a Sunday
tea-party in the drawing-room—through the kind
permission of Mr. and Mrs. Milton who were, as
usual, ‘away.’ Ernie’s Young Lady—I’ve completely
forgotten her name—proved to be a well-dressed,
self-possessed young woman with a vast knowledge
of people in wdiat we used to call 'society’; she talked
freely and fashionably, taking the larger share of
the conversation, of Ascot and Monte Carlo and the
Court. Prue’s Mr. Pettigrew was of a more serious
quality, and of the things he said I remember now
only that he expressed a firm conviction that Mes¬
sages from the Dead were Bound to Come in a few
years’ time. He was a chiropodist and very well
thought of in chiropodological circles.”

“Stop!” cried Radiant. “What is this? You are
talking nonsense, Sarnac. What is chiropodological
—hand—foot—scientific?”

“I thought you’d ask me that,” said Sarnac, smil¬
ing. “Chiropody was—corn-cutting.”

“Corn-cutting—harvesting,” said Starlight. “But
where do the hands and feet come in? There were
machines then, were there not?”

“No, this was a different sort of corn. Mr. Hum-
berg’s shop was full of corn-salves and corn-cures.
Corns were painful and tiresome callosities produced
on people’s feet by the pressure of ill-fitting boots.
We don’t know of such things nowadays, but they
darkened scores of lives in Pimlico.”

“But why did they wear ill-fitting boots?” de-

THE DREAM

215

manded Radiant. “Oh!—nevermind. Nevermind.
I know. A mad world which made boots at hazard
without looking at the feet that had to wear them!
And wore boots that hurt it when no sane people
would dream of wearing boots! Go on with your
story.”

“Let me see,” said Sarnac. “I was talking of a
tea-party, a family tea-party in the drawing-room—
in which we talked of everything in the world but
my sister Fanny. And quite a little while after
that tea-party my mother fell ill and died.

“It was a swift and sudden illness. She caught
a cold and would not go to bed. When she did go
to bed, she got up after one day of it, because she
couldn’t bear to think of all that Prue might be
doing or not doing in the house-work downstairs.
And her cold turned to pneumonia, the same sort of
inflammation that had carried off the Moggeridges,
and she died in three days.

“Now when the fever came upon her she changed
suddenly from something white and hard and un¬
approachable to something flushed and pitiful. Her
face grew smaller and younger looking, her eyes
bright, and something came into them that reminded
me of Fanny when Fanny was distressed. And all
my habit of sullen resistance to my mother melted
when I saw her struggling for breath on her tumbled
pillow and realised that she might be near the end
of all her hates and drudgeries. Matilda Good
became again the old friend who had known her
since she was a young woman, and they called each
other 'Tilda’ and 'Marty’ instead of Matilda and
Martha. Matilda for all her varicose veins was up

216

THE DREAM

and down stairs fifty times a day; and there was
much sending out for expensive things, the more
expensive the better, that Matilda thought my
mother might ‘fancy.’ They stood appealingly
untouched upon the table by her bedside. Once or
twice towards the end my mother asked for me, and
when I came in the evening and bent over her she
whispered hoarsely, ‘’Arry boy—promise me! . . .
Promise me! . . .’

“I sat down and took the hand she held out to me,
and so holding to me, she dozed.

“What she wanted me to promise she never said;
and whether it was some last vow she wanted to
extract from me that would separate me from Fanny
for ever, or whether her thoughts about Fanny had
changed under the shadow of death and she had
some new message for her, I cannot imagine to this
day. Perhaps she herself did not know what I had
to promise; a dying desire for predominance moved
her. Will stirred in her and faded again to nothing.
‘Promise me!’ Fanny she never mentioned by name
and we did not dare to bring my sister in to her.
Ernest came and kissed her and knelt down by the
bedside and suddenly, dreadfully wept aloud like
the child he was and set us all weeping; he was her
firstborn and her dearest, he had known her before
her final embitterment, he had always been a dutiful
son to her.

“Presently she was lying there very straight and
still, as hushed and still as my father’s shop on
Sundays, and the traffics and struggles and angers
of life had done with her for ever. Her face was
now neither young nor old, a marble face of peace.

THE DREAM

217

All her peevish resentment was smoothed and wiped
away. It had never occurred to me before that
she had or had not good looks, but now I saw that
Fanny’s fine regularity of feature came from her.
She was like Fanny, like an immobile, unhumorous
Fanny.

“I stood beside her still body oppressed by a grief
too wide and deep for tears, an immense grief that
was not so much for her as for all that distress of
life she had embodied. For now I saw that there
was not and there never had been anything hateful
in her; I saw for the first time the devotion of her,
the misguided passion for right, the mute, blunder¬
ing, tormented and tormenting love in her heart.
Even her love of Fanny was a love capsized and
inverted; her fallen daughter had been to her a
detested changeling for the pretty clever little girl
who was to have been a paragon of feminine virtue.
Except for Ernest how bitterly and repeatedly had
we children offended her rigid and implacable
standards, Fanny and I openly and rebelliously and
Prue by discovery! For Prue—I will not tell you
the details of Matilda’s exposure—pilfered.

“Long before we children began to thwart my
mother there must have been a still more monstrous
disappointment for her. What sort of dreams of
manly piety and decorum had she wrapped about my
poor, maundering, ramshackle, loose-limbed father
when he and she walked out together in their Sunday
clothes, making the best and more than the best
of themselves? He must have been a tall, good-
looking, young man then, and reassuringly apt with
pious reflections. What shocks had he, gross, clumsy,

218

THE DREAM

wayward, ignorant and incompetent as the dear man
was, inflicted upon her set and limited expectations?

“And then think of my Uncle John Julip again,
that wonderful and adored elder brother with the
manners of a sporting baronet, who had slowly
shrivelled down to the figure of a drunken thief!
Everything had shrivelled for her,—poor soul! In
our streets in those old days men were permitted
to sell brightly coloured distended bladders to chil¬
dren, the most apt instruments for acute disappoint¬
ment you can imagine; and the life God had given
my mother was very like one of these bladders. It
had burst and shrivelled down to a limp and empty
residue that nothing could ever restore. She had
faced her declining days, prematurely wrinkled,
weary, laborious and unloved except by one dutiful
son. . . .

“Yes, the thought of Ernest was a consolation to
me. Surely his loyalty had meant happiness for her.”

Sarnac paused. “I find it impossible,” he said,
“to disentangle my thoughts as I stood by my
mother’s death-bed from a thousand things that
have come to me since about her. I have had to
tell of her as an antagonist, as a hard, uncharitable
soul. That was her role in my story. But she was
indeed just the creature and victim of that disor¬
dered age which had turned her natural tenacity
to a blind intolerance and wasted her moral passion
upon ugly and barren ends. If Fanny and Ernest
and I had shown any stoutness against the disad¬
vantages of our start in life, if we had won for our¬
selves any knowledge or respect, we inherited that
much steadfastness from her; such honesty as we

THE DREAM

219

had was hers. If her moral harshness had over¬
shadowed and embittered our adolescence, her pas¬
sionate mothering had sheltered our childhood. Our
father would have loved us, wondered at us and
left us about. But early in her life, that fear, that
terror-stricken hatred of sex that overshadowed the
Christian centuries, that frantic resort to the sup¬
pressions, subjugations and disciplines of a stereo¬
typed marriage in its harshest form, a marriage as
easy to step into and as hard to leave as a steel trap
with its teeth hidden by the most elaborate secrecies
and misrepresentations, had set its pitiless grip upon
my mother’s imagination and blackened all ‘the
happier impulses in life for her. She was ready, if
necessary, to pass all her children through the fires
of that Moloch, if by so doing their souls might be
saved. She did it the more bitterly because she was
doing it against the deeper undeveloped things in
her own nature.

“Such things, more dimly appreciated perhaps,
passed through the mind of Harry Mortimer Smith,
my former self, as he stood beside his dead mother.
He was torn—I was torn—by a sense of irrational
separation and by the haunting persuasion of lost
opportunities. There were things I felt that I might
have said, propitious moments I might have seized
to make things better between us. I had differed
from her so harshly; I might have been so much
kinder to her and still have held my way. She lay
there a feeble, little, old woman, thin, worn and
prematurely aged. How often had I struck at her
with all my rebel strength, blind to the fact that
I could wound her as only a child can wound the

220

THE DREAM

mother who bore it. She had been darkened and
I also had been darkened, and now—now it was all
too late. The door had closed between us. And
was closed for ever. For ever. . .

§ 12

“The year and a half that intervened between
my mother’s death and the beginning of the First
World War—the War that came before the Poison
Gas War and the Great Desolation—were years of
rapid growth for me, mental and physical alike. I
remained with Matilda Good because I had come
to love that clumsy, wise, friendly creature almost
as if she was my second mother, but now I was
prosperous enough to occupy the whole of the second
floor and to have a sitting-room separate from my
bedroom. I still came down to the underground
breakfast-room for breakfast or supper or high tea
because I liked talking with Matilda. Prue had
married Mr. Pettigrew by that time, and in her
stead two grey and sedulous women came in—they
were sisters, one a spinster and the other the wife
of a broken-down prize-fighter—to do the drudg¬
eries Prue and my mother had done.

“My chief companion in those days was my sis¬
ter Fanny. Our childhood’s alliance was renewed
and strengthened. Wg had a need for each other;
we were able to help each other as no one else could
help us. I found out very soon that Fanny’s life
was divided into two very unequal parts; that she
had hours and sometimes days of excitement and
happiness with Newberry, who loved her greatly
and gave her all the time he could steal away for

THE DREAM

221

her and introduced her to such friends as he could
trust to respect her and keep their secret, and also
she had long stretches of uneventful solitude in
which she was terribly left to herself. My sister
Fanny was plucky and loyal and devoted, but be¬
fore we two got together again I think she found
those grey intervals of suspended animation dreary
and dangerous and sometimes almost intolerable.
Often she had nothing to live for at all, nothing
bright and vital, but the almost daily note, a hasty
word or so he scribbled to her. And the better he
was, the worse it was for her. The fact that he was
pleasant and delightful and deeply in love with her,
the very brightness of being with him, made those
great intervals seem darker and duller.”

“Hadn’t she work?” asked Sunray.

“And fellow workers, and other women?” asked
Firefly.

“Not in her position. Not as an unmarried
woman—of lowly origins—with a lover.”

“But there were others in the same position?
Surely there were many!”

“A scattered class, a class made to be ashamed of
itself. Newberry and Fanny were lovers, such
lovers as we are to-day; they got through with it
and at last, I believe, they married according to the
custom of the time. But they were the exceptional
ones, they knew what they wanted and had stout
hearts. Most of these irregular unions succumbed
to the boredom in between and to the temptations
of separation. Forgetfulness and jealousy played
havoc with these insecure couples. The girls in
their phases of loneliness picked up with other men

222

THE DREAM

and the first lover suspected their infidelities and
strayed away. I have a lot to tell you yet about
jealousy in the old world; it was not regarded as
an ugly thing but as a rather high-spirited thing.
People let it go and were proud of it. And the
majority of these irregular unions were not even
love unions in the first place, they were vice unions,
dishonest on either side. Drugs and drink crept
very easily into lives divided between over-excite¬
ment and tedium and darkened by a general dis¬
approval. The defiant pose was the easiest pose.
The unmarried lover was made a social outcast and
driven towards other sorts of social outcasts, more
evil and unhappy. ... You see perhaps now why
my sister Fanny was rather alone and aloof, for all
that she belonged to a numerous class.

“I suppose,” said Sarnac, “that the object of that
rigid legal marriage of the old world was to keep
lovers together. In countless cases it kept the
wrong people together and lovers apart. But then
you must remember that in those days children
were supposed to be providential accidents; they
were indeed accidents of cohabitation and that
altered all the conditions of the question. There
were no proper schools for children, no sort of
refuge if the parents parted and tore the home
asunder. We are so secure; it is hard to imagine
now the chancy insecurity of the ancient days. It
is hard to imagine the dangers that hung about an
unprotected child. In our world nowadays we all
seem to get paired; sooner or later each finds a
mate and marriage is a natural and necessary re¬
lationship instead of a compulsory device. All the

THE DREAM

223

priests of all the religions that have ever been in
the world could not bind me to Sunray more firmly
than I am bound to-day. Does one get a book and
an altar to marry the axe to its handle? . . .

“None of which does in the least degree affect
the fact that my sister Fanny suffered dreadfully
from loneliness before she rediscovered me.

“She was full of curiosities and enterprise, and
she took possession of my leisure to explore all
sorts of shows and resorts in and about old London,
museums, picture-galleries, parks, gardens and
heaths, that I should otherwise never have visited.
Indeed she might not have visited them either if I
had not been available as her escort, because in that
world of crazy suppressions, most of these places
were haunted by furtive love-hunters and feeble¬
minded folk who might have been irritating and
tiresome to a solitary girl so pretty as Fanny.
They would have followed her about and accosted
her when they got her alone, and thrust their dis¬
agreeable cravings between her and the beauty and
sunshine.

“But together we went gaily to all sorts of inter¬
esting things. This old London I am describing to
you had a large share of parks and gardens; there
was a pleasing quaintness about all of them and
much unpremeditated loveliness. There was a cer¬
tain Richmond Park, to which we often resorted,
with many fine old trees and grassy spaces and
wildernesses of bracken, that got very yellow and
gay in autumn, and a quantity of deer. You might
have been transported from this age to Richmond
Park two thousand years ago, and still fancied

224

THE DREAM

yourself in the northland parks of to-day. The
great trees, like nearly all trees in those days, were,
it is true, infested with fungus and partly decayed,
but Fanny and I never noticed that. They seemed
great healthy trees to us. And there was a view
from a hill-crest of the winding Thames, a very
delightful view. And then there were the oddest
old gardens and flower spaces at Kew. I remember
a quite good rock-garden and glass-houses of flow¬
ers; the brightest flowers the old world imagined
possible. And there were paths through a jungle
of rhododendra, primitive small rhododendra, but
bright coloured and a great delight to Fanny and
me. There was a place where we had tea at little
tables in the open air. In that frowsty old germ-
saturated world with its dread of draughts and
colds and coughs it gave one a bright sense of ad¬
venture to eat food in the open air.

“We went to museums and picture-galleries and
talked about what the pictures meant and we
talked of a thousand things together. There comes
back to me one conversation we had at a place
called Hampton Court, a queer, old, red-brick
palace with a great grape-vine under glass and an
ancient garden beside the Thames. There were
flower-beds full of half-wild herbaceous flowers,
and we walked beside them under trees until we
came to a low wall that looked upon the river, and
we sat down on a seat and there, after a silence,
suddenly Fanny, like one who has been pent up
beyond endurance, began talking of love.

“She began by asking questions about the girls
I had met and the girls at Thunderstone House.

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225

I described one or two of them to her. My chief
friend among them was Milly Kimpton from the
counting-house; we had got to the pitch of taking
teas together and such-like friendly acts. ‘That’s
not love/ said Fanny the wise, ‘lending each other
books. You don’t begin to know what love is yet,
Harry.

“ ‘But you will, Harry—you will.

“ ‘Don’t you be too late about it, Harry. There’s
nothing in life like loving someone, Harry. People
don’t talk to you about it and lots of people don’t
know what they are missing. It’s all the difference
between being nothing or something. It’s all the
difference between being dead or alive. When you
are really loving someone you’re all right and noth¬
ing can harm you. And when you aren’t, nothing
is right, everything is wrong. But love is a queer
thing, Harry, and about as dreadful as it is dear.
It gets wrong. Sometimes it all goes wrong and
it’s awful; it slips from you somehow; it goes and
you’re left mean and little—ever so mean!—and
you can’t get back and it seems you hardly want
to get back. You’re dead and you’re damned and
done for, and then again it all comes back again
like the sunrise—like being born afresh.’

“And then with a desperate shamelessness she
began to talk of Newberry and how much she loved
him. She told little irrelevant things about his
‘ways.’ ‘He comes to me whenever he can,’ she
said, and repeated this presently. ‘He’s all my life,’
she said. ‘You don’t know what he is to me. . . .’

“Then her constant dread of a separation crept
up to the surface of her thoughts.

226

THE DREAM

“ ‘Perhaps,’ she said, ‘it will always go on like
this. ... I don’t care if it does, I don’t care if
I never marry him. I wouldn’t care—not if at last
I’m thrown aside. I’d go through it all again and
count myself lucky even if I knew for certain I was
to be dropped and cast aside.’

“Queer Fanny! Her face was flushed and her
eyes shining with tears. I asked myself what had
been happening.

“ ‘He’ll never throw me aside, Harry. He’ll
never throw me aside. He can’t. He can’t. He’s
half as old again as I am and yet he comes to me

in his trouble. Once- Once he cried to me.

Men, all of you, are so strong and yet so help¬
less. . . .

“ ‘You’ve got to have a woman to come to. . . .

“ ‘Just a little while ago- Well- He

was ill. He was very ill. He has pain in his eyes
and sometimes he’s afraid about them. This time,
suddenly, he had frightful pains. And he thought
he couldn’t see. He came straight to me, Harry.
He called a cab and came to me, and he came feel¬
ing his way upstairs to me and fumbling at the
door; and I nursed him in my darkened room until
the pain had gone. He didn’t go home, Harry,
where there were servants and nurses to be got and
attendants and everything; he came to me. It was
me he came to. Me! He’s my man. He knows
I’d give my life for him. I would, Harry. I’d cut
my body to pieces bit by bit, if it would make him
happy.

“ ‘It wasn’t so much the pain he had, Harry,
as the fear. He’s not the one to mind a bit of pain

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227

or be afraid of many things. But he was afraid
and scared. He’d never been afraid before, but
he was afraid of going blind—he was too afraid
to go to the specialist. It was like a little child,
Harry, and him so big and strong—afraid of the
dark. He thought they’d get hold of him so that
perhaps he’d not be able to come to me. He
thought he wouldn’t be able to see his beloved
magazines and papers any more. And the pain just
turned the screw on him. He clung to me.

“ Tt was me made him go. I took him there.
He wouldn’t have gone if it hadn’t been for me.
He’d have just let things drift on and not a soul
in the world, for all his money and power, to mother
him. And then he might really have gone blind
if it hadn’t been taken in time. I pretended to be
his secretary and I took him and waited in the
waiting-room for him. I dreaded they’d hurt him.
I was listening for something to happen all the
time. I had to look at their old Graphics as if I
didn’t care a rap what they were doing to him. And
then he came out smiling with a green shade on
and I had to stand up stiff and cool and wait to
hear what he had to say. I was scared by that
shade, Harry. Scared! I held my breath. I
thought it had come. “It isn’t so bad as we
fancied, Miss Smith,” he says—offhand like. “You
kept the taxi? You’ll have to take my arm I’m
afraid.” “Certainly sir,” I said, mimpsy-like. I
was careful to be kind of awkward taking his arm.
There were people there in the waiting-room and
you never know. Acted respectful. Me!—that
has had him in my arms a thousand times.

228

THE DREAM

“ 'But when we were in the taxi and safe he
pushed up the shade and took me into his arms and
he hugged me and he cried—he cried wet tears.
And held me. Because he’d got me still and his
sight still and the work he loves to do. Things
would have to be done to his eyes but he’d keep
his sight—and he has. There’s been no trouble
now. Not for months.’

“She sat looking away from me over the shining
river.

“ ‘How could he ever leave me?’ she said. ‘After
a time like that?’

“Stoutly she spoke, but even to my youthful eyes
she seemed little and lonely, sitting there on the
old red wall.

“I thought of the busy bustling man with the
big tortoise-shell glasses away from her, and of one
or two things I had heard whispered about him.
It seemed to me then that no men were good
enough for the women in the world.

“ ‘When he’s tired or in trouble/ said Fanny,
sure and still, ‘he’ll always come back to me.’ ”

CHAPTER THE SIXTH

MARRIAGE IN WAR TIME

§ 1

‘‘And now,” said Sarnac, “comes a change of
costume. You have been thinking of me, I sup¬
pose, as a gawky youth of seventeen or eighteen,
dressed in those ill-fitting wholesale clothes we used
to call ‘ready-mades/ That youth wore a white
collar round his neck and a black jacket and dark
grey trousers of a confused furtive patterning and
his hat was a black hemisphere with a little brim,
called a Bowler. Now he changes into another sort
of ‘ready-mades,’ even more ill-fitting,—the khaki
uniform of a young British soldier in the Great
World War against Germany. In 1914 Anno
Domini, a magic wand, the wand of political
catastrophe, waved to and fro over Europe, and
the aspect of that world changed, accumulation
gave place to destruction and all the generation of
young men I have described as being put together
from such shops as those one saw in Cheapside,
presently went into khaki and fell into ranks and
tramped off to the lines of ditches and desolation
that had extended themselves across Europe. It
was a war of holes and barbed wire and bombs and
big guns like no war that had ever happened before.
It was a change of phase in the world muddle. It

229

230

THE DREAM

was like some liquid which has been growing hotter
and hotter, suddenly beginning to boil and very
swiftly boiling over. Or it was like a toboggan
track in the mountains, when after a long easy,
almost level run, one comes to a swift drop and a
wild zig-zag of downward curves. It was the same
old downward run at a dramatic point.

“Change of costume there was and change of
atmosphere. I can still recall the scared excite¬
ments of the August days when the war began and
how incredulous we English were when we heard
that our own little army was being driven back
before the German hosts like a spluttering kitten
pushed by a broom, and that the French lines were
collapsing. Then came the rally of September. At
the beginning we British youngsters had been ex¬
cited spectators, but as the tale of our army’s efforts
and losses came home to us we crowded to the re¬
cruiting offices, by thousands and scores of thou¬
sands, until at last our volunteers could be counted
by the million. I went with the crowd.

“It may seem a curious thing to you that I lived
through all the Great World War against Germany,
that I was a soldier in it and fought and was
wounded and went back and took part in the final
offensive, that my brother Ernest became a ser¬
geant and won a medal for gallantry and was killed
within a few weeks of the concluding Armistice,
that all the circumstances of my life were revolu¬
tionised by the war and that nevertheless it does
not come into the story of my life as a thing of im¬
portance in itself to that story. As I think of it
now, I think of the Great World War as a sort of

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231

geographical or atmospheric fact, like living ten
miles from your working place or being married in
an April shower. One would have to travel the ten
miles every day or put up an umbrella as one came
out of church, but it wouldn’t touch what one was
intimately or alter in any essential the living sub¬
stance of one’s life. Of course the World War
killed and tortured millions of us, impoverished us
all and dislocated the whole world. But that only
meant that so many millions went out of life and
that there was a fractional increase in everyone’s
anxiety and disorder; it didn’t change the nature
and passions, the ignorances and bad habits of
thought of the millions who remained. The World
War arose out of these ignorances and misconcep¬
tions and it did nothing to alter them. After it
was all over the world was a good deal rattled and
much shabbier than before, but it was still the same
old mean and haphazard world, acquisitive, di¬
vided, cantingly patriotic, idiotically prolific, dirty,
diseased, spiteful and conceited. It has taken two-
score centuries of research and teaching, training,
thought and work to make any great alteration in
that.

“I admit the outbreak of the World War had a
really tremendous air of being an end and a begin¬
ning. There were great days in it at first, and
for us British as much as for any people. We ap¬
prehended the thing in splendid terms. We thought
quite honestly—I speak of the common people—
that the Imperialisms of Central Europe were
wholly wrong and that we were wholly right; hun¬
dreds of thousands of us gave ourselves gladly in

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the sincere belief that a new world was to be won
by victory. That spirit was not confined to Britain,
nor to either side in this war. I am convinced that
the years 1914, 1915 and 1916 saw finer crops of
brave and generous deeds and noble sacrifices, of
heroic toil and heroic patience, than any years that
ever came before in the whole history of mankind
or than any of the years that followed for many
centuries. The young people were wonderful;
death and honour reaped gloriously among them.
And then the inherent unsoundness of the issue be¬
gan to wear through and that false dawn faded out
of men’s hearts. By the end of 1917 the whole
world was a disillusioned world, with but one hope
left, the idealism of the United States of America
and the still untested greatness of President Wil¬
son. But of that and what it came to, you read
about in the history books and I will not talk about
it now. A God in that man’s position might have
unified the world in the twentieth century and
saved it centuries of tragic struggle. President
Wilson was not a God. . . .

“And I do not think I need tell you very much
of the w T ar itself as I saw it. It was a strange phase
in human experience and it was described and
painted and photographed and put on record very
completely. Most of us have read quite a lot about
it—except of course Firefly. You know how human
life concentrated for four whole years upon the
trenches that stretched across Europe on either
front of Germany. You know how thousands of
miles of land were turned into wildernesses of mud-
holes and wire. Nowadays of course nobody reads

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233

the books of the generals and admirals and poli¬
ticians of that time, and all the official war histories
sleep the eternal sleep in the vaults of the great
libraries, but probably you have all read one or two
such human books as Enid Bagnold’s Diary with¬
out Dates or Cogswell’s Ermytage and the Curate
or Barbusse’s Le Feu or Arthur Green’s Story of a
Prisoner of War or that curious anthology, The
War Stories of Private Thomas Atkins, and prob¬
ably you have seen photographs and films and also
pictures painted by such men as Nevinson and
Orpen and Muirhead Bone and Will Rothenstein.
All of them, I can certify now, are very true books
and pictures. They tell of desolation passing like
the shadow of an eclipse across the human scene.

“But the mind has the pow r er of reducing and
effacing every sort of impression that drags pain
with it. I spent great parts out of two years in
that noxious, gun-pocked land of haste and hiding,
and that time now seems less than many days of
my peace-time life. I killed two men with the
bayonet in a trench, and it remains as though it
was done by someone else and had no significance
for me at all. I remember much more clearly that
I felt very sick when afterwards I found my sleeve
saturated with blood and blood on my hand, and
how I tried to get it off by rubbing my arm in the
sand because there was no water to be got. In
the trenches life was hideously uncomfortable and
tedious and while it lasted I was, I know, inter¬
minably bored by the drag of the hours, but all
those hours are concentrated now into a record of
the fact. I remember the shock of the first shell

234

THE DREAM

that burst near me and how slowly the smoke and
dust unfolded, and how there was a redness in the
smoke and how for a time it blotted out the light.
That shell burst in a field of yellow-flowering weeds
and stubble against the sun, but I do not recall
what preceded it nor what followed it; shell-bursts
rattled me more and more as the war went on, but
they left weaker and weaker pictures.

"One of my most vivid memories of that time
is the excitement of my first leave from the front,
and how my party arrived at Victoria Station and
were guided in a clattering throng to a sort of
transport drain called the Underground Railway by
elderly volunteers wearing brassards. I was still
muddy from the trenches; there had been no time
for a wash and a brush-up, and I was carrying my
rifle and other gear; we crowded into a brightly
lit first-class carriage in which were a number of
people in evening dress who were going out to
dinner and to the theatre. There could not have
been a more vivid contrast if I had seen Firefly there
in all her loveliness. There was one young man not
much older than myself between two gorgeously
dressed women. He had a little white bow under
his pink chin and a silk neck-wrap, he had a black
cloak with a cape and an opera hat. I suppose he
was an invalid but he looked as fit as I. I felt a
momentary impulse to say something humiliating
to him. I don’t think I did. I do not remember
that I did. But I looked at him and then at the
brown stain on my sleeve and the wonder of life
possessed me.

“No—I said nothing. I was in a state of intense

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235

exhilaration. The other fellows were gay and in¬
clined to be noisy, one or two were a little drunk,
but I was quietly exalted. I seemed to be hearing
and seeing and perceiving with such an acuteness
as I had never known before. Fanny I should see
on the morrow, but that evening I hoped to see
Hetty Marcus with whom I was in love. I was
in love with her with an intensity that only soldier-
boys who had been living in the mud of Flanders
for half a year could understand.”

§ 2

“How,” asked Sarnac, “can I make you see
Hetty Marcus, dark-eyed, warm-skinned, wayward
and fragile, who brought me to love and death two
thousand years ago?

“In a way, she was like Sunray here. She was
of her type. She had the same darkness in her eyes,
the same still bearing. She was like Sunray’s hungry
sister. With a touch of fire in her blood.

“Yes—and she had those same stumpy little
fingers. . . . Look at them!

“I met her on those very Downs I used to walk
over with my father when I was a boy, to steal the
produce from Lord Bramble’s gardens. I had a
short leave before I was drafted to France and I
did not spend it in London with Matilda Good and
Fanny as you may think I should have done, but
I went with three other youngsters who had enough
money to do so, to Cliffstone. I don’t know whether
I can make it clear to you why I went to Cliffstone.
I was excited at the thought of going into the actual
warfare, I meant to do brave and wonderful things

236

THE DREAM

over there, but also I was terribly overshadowed
by the thought that I might be killed. I did not
think of wounds or suffering, I do not think I feared
those things at all, but I had a profound dread and
hatred of extinction before ever I had fully lived,
before I had ever tasted many of the most alluring
things in life. I had always promised myself love
and great adventures with women, and I was
passionately distressed at the possibility of being
cheated of those intensities. All of us young inno¬
cents were in the same case. It was I who had
thought of Cliffstone, near to our training camp,
with its band and promenade and its flitting glanc¬
ing girls. There if anywhere, it seemed to me, we
must snatch something from life before the great
shells splashed us to pieces and the clay of Flanders
devoured us. We sneaked off from our families
with those fires of protesting romance in our brains
and veins.

“You cannot imagine how many millions of lads
there Avere in Europe then, pitifully eager not to
miss altogether the secret and magic experiences of
love before they died. I cannot tell you of the
pothouses and prostitutes that lay in wait for us
or of the gaunt moonlight on the beach. I cannot
tell you of temptation and ignorance and disease.
It is too ugly to tell you; such things are passed
and done with, and men suffer them no more. We
groped in darkness where now men walk in the
light. One of my mates had an ugly misadventure;
all had ugly experiences and I escaped by chance
rather than any merit of my own from those slovenly
snares. I was for a moment fastidious and I recoiled.

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237

And I had not drunken as the others had, because
some streak of pride in me had made me habitually
wary with drink.

“But I was in a storm of excitements and dis¬
tresses. I was slipping into the pit though I hated
it, and to escape it I set myself to revive my memo¬
ries of the days when I was a boy. I went to Cherry
Gardens to see the old home and then to my father’s
grave—it was neat and pretty with Fanny’s money
—and then I determined to walk over the Downs
to recall, if I could, something of the wonder that
I had felt when first I went over them to Chessing
Hanger. And also, if you understand me, I felt
love and romance would be there. I hadn’t aban¬
doned the quest that had brought me to Cliffstone;
I had only jumped a foul ditch on my way. When
I was a child I had supposed Heaven was over the
Downs, and certainly the golden summer sunsets
were. It seemed natural to turn my back on Cliff-
stone and go up into the only really lovely country
I had ever known, if I wanted to find romance.

“And I found it.

“I was thrilled but not a bit surprised when I
saw Hetty appear over the sky-line of the hill and
come right over the brow and stand with her hands
behind her back and the sun shining on her hair,
looking out across the woods and cornfields to Blythe
and the distant marches and the sea. She had taken
her hat off and was holding it behind her. She wore
an ivory-coloured silk blouse very open at the neck
and it was just as though you could see her body
through the flimsy stuff.

“She dropped into a sitting position, now looking

238

THE DREAM

at her world and now plucking at the little dwarfish
flowers in the Downland turf.

“I stood for a time agape at her. Then my
whole being was filled with a tremulous resolve
to talk to her. My path curved up the slope and
carried me over the shoulder of the hill not very
far from her. I followed it, stopping ever and
again as if to look at the land and sea below T , until
it brought me as near to her as it could, and then
I left it and with a clumsy affectation of carelessness
strolled up to the summit until I stood beside her
and about six yards away. I pretended not to
observe her. I clenched my hands to keep my self-
control. She had become aw T are of me and she
was quite motionless now, sitting up and looking
at me, but she did not seem in the least dismayed.
Your fine face she had, Sunray, and your dark eyes,
and I have never known anyone, not even you, who
could keep a face so still. Not rigid or hard or
staring it was, but quietly, profoundly, still, like a
face in some beautiful picture.

“I was all a-tremble, my heart was beating fast
but I kept my wits about me.

“ ‘Was there ever a lovelier view?’ I said. T
suppose that bit of blue there that looks like a raft
where the water shines, I suppose that is Denge
Ness?’

“She did not answer for what seemed a long
time. She surveyed me with an unfathomable ex¬
pression. Then she spoke and as she spoke she
smiled. ‘You know that is Denge Ness as well as
I do.’

“I smiled at her smile. Shy pretences were not

THE DREAM

239

for her. I came a step or so nearer with a con¬
versational air. ‘I have known this view/ I said,
‘since I was a boy of ten. But I did not know
anyone else set any value upon it.’

“ ‘Nor 1/ she said. ‘I came to look at it perhaps
for the last time/ she vouchsafed. ‘I’m going away/

“ ‘I’m going away too.’

“ ‘Over there?’ she asked, and nodded her head
to where the land of France hung like a cloud in
the sky.

“ ‘In a week or so.’

“ ‘I’ll get to France too. But not so soon as a
week or two. But I am going into the Women’s
Auxiliary Army Corps and I know I shall get over
there at last. I join up to-morrow. How can one
stay at home with all you boys out there, get¬
ting-’

“She was going to say getting ‘killed.’ But she
caught the word back and finished it with, ‘Getting
into all sorts of danger and trouble.’

“ ‘One has to go/ I said.

“She looked at me with her head a little on one
side. ‘Tell me/ she said. ‘Do you want to go?’

“ ‘Not a bit. I hate the whole monstrous busi¬
ness. But there’s no way out. The Germans have
put it on us and we have to go through with it.’

“That was how we all saw it in England during
the War. But I won’t stop now to argue what really
caused a war that ended two thousand years ago.
‘The Germans put it on us. I hate going. I wanted
to go on with the work I was doing. Now every¬
thing is upset.’

240

THE DREAM

“ 'Everything/ she said and thought for some
moments. 'I hate going too/ she said.

" 'It drags on week after week, month after
month/ I complained. ‘The boredom of it! The
drills, the salutes, the silly little officers! If only
they would take us and raffle us and kill us and
have done with it so that we could either die or
go home and do something sensible! My life is
being wasted. I have been in the machine a year—
and I’ve only got- thus far on my way to France!
When I see a German soldier at last I shall want
to kiss him I shall be so glad. But either I shall
kill him or he will kill me—and that will be the
end of the story.’

" 'And yet one can’t keep out of it/ she said.

“ ‘And there is something tremendous about it/
she went on. ‘Once or twice I have been up here
when there were air-raids. I live quite close here.
These air-raids get more and more frequent now¬
adays. I don’t know what they are coming to.
You see the searchlights now, every night, waving
about like the arms of a drunken man. All over
the sky. But before that you hear the pheasants
in the woods, clucking and crying. They always
hear it first. Other birds take it up. They cry and
twitter. And then far away the guns begin rum¬
bling. At first a little sound— “pud-pud,” then like
the whoof of a hoarse dog. And then one gun after
another picks it up as the raid comes nearer. Some¬
times you can catch the whirr of the engines of the
Gothas. There’s a great gun behind the farm-house
away there and you wait for that and when it fires
it hits you on the chest. Hardly anything is to be

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241

seen except the searchlights. There’s a little flicker
in the sky—and star shells. But the guns—riot.
It’s mad but it’s immense. It takes you. Either
you are wild with fright or you are wild with excite¬
ment. I can’t sleep. I walk about my room and
long to be out. Twice I’ve gone out into the night,
into the moonlight—with everything a-quiver.
Gone for long walks. Once shrapnel fell in our
orchard with a hiss like rain. It ripped the bark
of the apple trees and tore off twigs and branches
and killed a hedge-hog. I found the little wretch
in the morning, nearly cut in two. Death hap¬
hazard! I don’t mind the death and the danger
so much. But it’s the quiver in the world I can’t
endure. Even in the daytime sometimes, you can’t
quite hear them, but you can feel the guns, over
beyond there. . . .

“ 'Our old servant,’ she said, 'believes it is the
end of the world.’

" ‘For us it may be,’ I said.

"She made no answer.

"I looked at her face and my imagination rioted.

"I began to talk with a bare simplicity such as
we rarely attained in that shy and entangled age.
But my heart was beating fast. 'For years,’ I
said, ‘I have dreamt of the love of a girl. It was
to have been the crown of life. I have saved myself
up for it. I have had a friend or so, but it wasn’t
love. And now I am near to going. Out there.
It is only a few days before I go over there—to
whatever is waiting for me. And when it seems
beyond hope I come upon someone. . . . Don’t
think me mad, please. Don’t think I’m lying. I

242

THE DREAM

am in love with you. Indeed I am. You seem
altogether beautiful to me. Your voice, your eyes
—everything. I could worship you. . . .’

“I couldn’t say a word more for a moment or
so. I rolled over on the turf and looked her in
the face. ‘I’m sorry/ I said. Tm a silly young
Tommy suddenly in love—oh! desperately in love.’

“Her grave face regarded me. She did not look
frightened or disconcerted. Perhaps her heart beat
faster than I thought. But her voice when she
spoke was constrained.

“ ‘Why are you talking like that? You’ve just
met me. . . . How can you love me? It isn’t
possible people should love like this.’

“ ‘I’ve seen you long enough-’

“I could not talk. I met her eyes. Hers dropped
before mine. The warm colour mounted to her
cheeks. She bit her lips.

“ ‘You,’ she said in a low voice, ‘are just in love
with love.’

“ ‘Anyhow, I am in love,’ I said.

“She plucked a spray of minute flowers and forgot
it in her hand.

“ ‘This is your last day?’ she asked, and made
my heart beat faster.

“ ‘It may be my last altogether for this sort of
thing. Who can tell? . . . For a long time any¬
how. Why should it hurt you to let me love you
to-day? Why shouldn’t you be kind to me? Civil
to me—anyhow. I don’t ask for so very much. If
—suppose—we went for a walk together? Just a
long walk. If we spent most of the day together?
Somewhere we might get something to eat. . . .’

THE DREAM

243

“She sat considering me gravely.

“ ‘Suppose I did,’ she said as if to herself. ‘Sup¬
pose I did.’

“ ‘What harm could it do you?’

“ ‘What harm could it do?’ she repeated with
her eyes on mine.

“If I had been older and more experienced I
might have known from her warm flushed face and
her dark eyes that she too was in love with love
that day, and that our encounter was as exciting
for her as for me. Suddenly she smiled; she showed
herself for an instant as ready as myself. Her
constraint had vanished.

“ ‘I’ll come,’ she decided, and rose with an effort¬
less ease to her feet, and then at my eager move¬
ment as I sprang up before her: ‘But you’ll have to
be good, you know. It’s just a walk—and a talk.
. . . Why shouldn’t we? ... If we keep away
from the village.’ ”

§ 3

“It would seem the queerest story in the world
if I told you how we two youngsters spent that day,
we who were such strangers that we did not know
each other’s names and yet who were already drawn
so closely together. It was a day of kindly beauty
and warmth and we rambled westward until we
came to a ridge that dropped steeply to a silvery,
tree-bordered canal, and along that ridge we went
until we reached a village and a friendly inn, where
there were biscuits and cheese and some apples to
make a lunch upon. For a time a mood of shyness
followed our first avowals, then Hetty talked of her

244

THE DREAM

home and of her place in the world. It was only
after we had eaten together that we became easy
and familiar with each other. It was only as the
sun was sinking in the west and our day drew to
its golden end that we embraced suddenly as we
sat together on a felled tree in a wood, and that I
learnt from her what a sweet and wonderful delight
the kiss of love may be.”

§ 4

Sarnac paused.

“It happened two thousand years ago but it seems
to me that it happened just six years from now.
Once more I am back in that wood among the
long warm shadows of the evening and all my
dreams and imaginations awake to reality with
Hetty’s body in my arms and her lips to mine. I
have been able to tell you my story hitherto with
a sort of wonder and detachment, as though I
showed it you through a telescope. But I have
been telling you overmuch perhaps of Fanny and
Matilda Good because I have had a sort of reluc¬
tance about Hetty. She is still so fresh in my mind
that she seems as I name her to come even here
and to be living still, a perplexity between Sunray,
who is so like her and so unlike her, and myself.
I love her again and hate her again as though I
was still that assistant editor, that writer of rubbish,
in lost and forgotten Thunderstone House in dead
old London. . . .

“And I can’t, describe things now,” said Sarnac,
“as I have described them up to this. I seem no
longer to look back into past things. My memories

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245

are living and suffering; they inflame and hurt.
I loved Hetty; she was all the delight of love to
me. I married her, I divorced her, I repented of
the divorce and I was killed for her sake.

“And it seems as if I was killed not a day
ago. . . .

“I married while I was in England before I was
passed for active service again after my wound. I
was wounded in the arm-”

Sarnac stopped and felt his arm. Sunray looked
sharply at it and ran her hand down it from shoulder
to elbow as if to reassure herself. The others burst
into laughter at her manifest anxiety and her ex¬
pression of relief, the guest-master being particularly
delighted.

“I was wounded nevertheless. I was a sitting-up
case in the ambulance. I could tell you stories
about the nurses and the hospital and how we had
a panic about a submarine as we crossed to England.
. . . I married Hetty before I went back because
we were now altogether lovers and it was just pos¬
sible she might have a child. And moreover there
was a business about allowances if I got killed that
was an added inducement to marry. In those days
of haphazard death for the young there was a world¬
wide fever of love-making and countless such
snatched marriages.

“She had never got to France as she had said
she hoped to do. For most of the time she was
driving a car for the Ministry of Supplies in London.
We spent two days of wild endearment, the only
honeymoon we could get, at her mother’s farm at
Payton Links, a little hamlet near Chessing Hanger.

246

THE DREAM

(I do not think I have told you that she was the
only daughter of a farmer and that Mrs. Marcus,
her mother, was a widow.) Hetty had been a clever
girl, an elementary school teacher and bookish and
enterprising for a country place. She had never
mentioned me to her mother until she had written
to tell of her approaching marriage.

“When her mother had driven us from the station
to the farm and I had helped her to put away the
pony, the old lady’s non-committal manner relaxed
and she said, 'Well, it might have been worse.
You’ve looks and fairish shoulders for one who’s
town-bred. You can kiss me, my boy, though Smith
is a poor exchange for Marcus, and I can’t see how
anyone can ever expect to get a living for man and
wife at a fancy trade like publishing. I’d hoped
at first she meant a publican. But publishing she
says it is. Whether you’re properly old enough for
Hetty, Time will show.’

“Time did show very rapidly that I was not
properly old enough for Hetty, though I resisted
the demonstration with passionate vigour.

“In this world of ours we are by comparison very
simple and direct. In that old world we should have
seemed shockingly simple and direct. It’s not only
that they wrapped up and hid their bodies in all
sorts of queer garments and wrappings but also
that they wrapped up and distorted and hid their
minds. And while we to-day have the same simple
and clean ideas all over the world about sexual
restraints and sexual freedoms, people in those days
had the most various and complicated codes, half-
hidden and half-confessed. And not merely half-

THE DREAM

247

hidden but imperfectly realised, subconscious rather
than thought out and settled. Few of these codes
respected the freedom of other people or set any
bounds to the most extravagant developments of
jealousy. And while Hetty’s thoughts about love
and marriage had been nourished on a diet of coun¬
try-side folk and then of novels and poetry devoured
with avidity and had had tremendous releases in the
lax atmosphere of war-time London, I, in spite of
my love for and faith in Fanny, had almost unwit¬
tingly adopted the rigid standards of my mother.
As we used to say in those days, Hetty’s was a much
more artistic temperament than mine. For my part
I did not so much think as assume that the worship
of a man for a woman gave place to mastery as
soon as her love was won, that the problem of ab¬
solute fidelity for both lovers was to be facilitated
on his side by an absolute submissiveness on hers.
And about her, wherever she went, invisible but
real, there had to be a sort of cloistered quality.
It was implicit, moreover, that she had never
thought of love before she met her predestined and
triumphant lover. Ridiculous and impossible you
will say! But Sunray here has read the old novels
and she can witness that that was the code.”

Sunray nodded. “That is the spirit of them,”
she said.

“Well, in fact, Hetty was not only half a year
older than I but ages beyond me in the business of
love. She was my teacher. While I had been
reading about atoms and Darwin and exploration
and socialism, she had been sucking the honey of
sensuous passion from hints and half-hints in old

248

THE DREAM

romances and poems from Shakespeare and the old
playwrights. And not only, I realise now, from
books. She took me as one captures and tames
an animal and made my senses and my imagination
hers. Our honeymoon was magical and wonderful.
She delighted in me and made me drunken with
delights. And then we parted wonderfully with the
taste of her salt tears on my lips, and I went off to
the last five months of the War.

“I can see her now, slender as a tall boy in her
khaki breeches and driver’s uniform, waving to my
train as it drew out of Chessing Hanger station.

“She wrote adorable and whimsical love-letters
that made me ache to be with her again, and just
when we were forcing the great German barrier of
the Hindenberg line, came one to tell me we were
to have a child. She had not told me of it before,
she said, because she had not been quite sure of it.
Now she was sure. Would I love her still, now that
she would be no longer slim and gracious? Love
her still! I was filled with monstrous pride.

“I wrote back to tell her how my job at Thunder-
stone House was being saved for me, how we would
certainly get a little house, a ‘dear little house,’ in
some London suburb, how I would worship and
cherish her. Her answer was at once tender and
unusual. She said I was too good to her, far too
good; she repeated with extraordinary passion that
she loved me, had never loved and could never love
anyone but me, that she hated my absence more
than she could tell, and that I was to do everything
I could, move heaven and earth to get my discharge
and come home to her and be with her and never,

THE DREAM

249

never, never leave her again. She had never wanted
my arms about her as she wanted them now. I
read nothing between the lines of that outbreak.
It seemed just a new mood amidst the variety of
her moods.

“Thunderstone House wanted me back as soon
as possible, and the War had done much to increase
the power and influence of all magazine publishers
and newspaper proprietors. I got out of the army
within three months of the Armistice and came back
to a very soft and tender and submissive Hetty, a
new Hetty more wonderful even than the old. She
was evidently more passionately in love with me
than ever. We took some furnished rooms in a
part of London called Richmond, near the Thames
and a great park, and we sought vainly for that
bright little house in which our child was to be born.
But there were no bright little houses available.

“And slowly a dark shadow fell across the first
brightness of our reunion. The seasonable days
passed but Hetty’s child was not born. It was not
born indeed until it was nearly two months too
late for it to be my child.”

§ 5

“We are trained from earliest childhood in the
world to be tolerant and understanding of others
and to be wary and disciplined with our own way¬
ward impulses, we are given from the first a clear
knowledge of our entangled nature. It will be hard
for you to understand how harsh and how disin¬
genuous the old world was. You live in a world
that is as we used to say ‘better bred.’ You will

250

THE DREAM

find it difficult to imagine the sudden storm of temp¬
tation and excitement and forgetfulness in Hetty’s
newly aroused being that had betrayed her into
disloyalty, and still more difficult will you find the
tangle of fear and desperate dishonesty that held
her silent from any plain speech with me after my
return. But had she spoken instead of leaving it to
me to suspect, discover and accuse, I doubt if she
would have found any more mercy in me for her
pitiful and abominable lapse.

“I see now that from the day I returned to Hetty
she was trying to tell me of her disaster and failing
to find a possible way of doing so. But the vague
intimations in her words and manner dropped like
seeds into my mind and germinated there. She was
passionately excited and made happy by my coming
back; our first week together was the happiest week
of my old-world life. Fanny came to see us once
and we went and had a dinner at her flat, and some¬
thing had happened to her too, I knew not what,
to make her very happy. Fanny liked Hetty. When
she kissed me good night after her dinner, she held
me and whispered: ‘She’s a dear. I thought Fd be
jealous of your wife, Harry, but I love her.’

“Yes, we were very happy for that week. We
walked along together back to our rooms instead of
taking a taxi, for it was better for Hetty to walk.
A happy week it was that stretched almost to a
happy fortnight. And then the shadows of suspi¬
cion gathered and deepened.

“It was in bed in the darkness of the night that
I was at last moved to speak plainly to Hetty. I
woke up and lay awake for a long time, very still

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251

and staring at my bleak realisation of what had
happened to us. Then I turned over, sat up in bed
and said, ‘Hetty. This child is not mine.’

“She answered at once. It was plain she too
had been awake. She answered in a muffled voice
as though her face lay against the pillow. ‘No.’

“ ‘You said, no?’

“She stirred, and her voice came clearer.

“ ‘I said no. Oh Husbind-boy I wish I was dead!
I wish to God I was dead.’

“I sat still and she said no more. We remained
like two fear-stricken creatures in the jungle, mo¬
tionless, in an immense silence and darkness.

“At last she moved. Her hand crept out towards
me, seeking me, and at that advance I recoiled. I
seemed to hang for a moment between two courses
of action, and then I gave myself over to rage.
‘You’d touch me!’ I cried, and got out of bed and
began to walk about the room.

“‘I knew it!’ I shouted. ‘I knew it! I felt it!
And I have loved you! You cheat! You foul
thing! You lying cheat!’ ”

§ 6

“I think I described to you earlier in the story how
my family behaved when Fanny left us, how we all
seemed to be acting and keeping up a noise of in¬
dignation as if we were afraid of some different and
disturbing realisations coming through to us should
that barrage of make-believe morality fail. And
just as my father and my mother behaved in that
downstairs kitchen in Cherry Gardens so now I be¬
haved in that desolating crisis between myself and

252

THE DREAM

Hetty. I stormed about the room, I hurled insults
at her. I would not let the facts that she was a
beaten and weeping thing, that she certainly loved
me, and that her pain tortured me, prevail against
my hard duty to my outraged pride.

“I lit the gas, I don’t remember when, and the
scene went on in that watery Victorian light. I
began dressing, for never more was I to lie in bed
with Hetty. I meant to dress and, having said my
say, to go out of the house. So I had to be scornful
and loudly indignant, but also I had to find my
various garments, pull my shirt over my head and
lace up my boots. So that there were interludes
in the storm, when Hetty could say something that
I had to hear.

“ Tt all happened in an evening,’ she said. Tt
isn’t as though I had planned to betray you. It
was his last day before he left and he was wretched.
It was the thought of you made me go with him.
It was just kindness. There were two of our girls
going to have dinner with their boys and they asked
me to come and that was how I met him. Officers
they were all three, and schoolfellows. Londoners.
Three boys who were going over—just as you were.
It seemed rotten not to make a party for them.’

“I was struggling with my collar and stud but
I tried to achieve sarcasm. ‘I see,’ I said, ‘under
the circumstances mere politeness dictated—what
you did. . . . Oh, my God!’

“ ‘Listen how it happened, Harry. Don’t shout
at me again for a minute. Afterwards he asked
me to come to his rooms. He said the others were
coming on. He seemed such a harmless sort!’

THE DREAM

253

“ ‘Very!’

“ 'He seemed the sort who’d surely get killed.
And I was sorry for him. He was fair like you.
Fairer. And it seemed all different that night.
And then he got hold of me and kissed me and I
struggled, but I didn’t seem to have the strength
to resist. I didn’t realise somehow.’

“ ‘That’s pretty evident. That I can believe.’

“ ‘You’ve got no pity, Harry. Perhaps it’s just.
I suppose I ought to have seen the risk. But we
aren’t all strong like you. Some of us are pulled
this way and that. Some of us do the thing we
hate. I did what I could. It was like waking-up
to realise what had happened. He wanted me to
stay with him. I ran out from his rooms. I’ve
never seen him since. He’s written but I haven’t
answered.’

“ ‘He knew you were a soldier’s wife.’

“ ‘He’s rotten. He knew it. He planned it while
we were at dinner. He prayed and promised and
lied. He said he wanted just a kiss, just one kiss
for kindness. He began with that kiss. I’d been
drinking wine, and I’m not used to wine. Oh,
Harry! Husbind-boy, if I could have died! But
I’d kissed and played about with boys before I met
you. It seemed so little—until it was too late.’

“ ‘And here we are!’ said I.

“I came and sat down on the bed and stared at
Hetty’s dishevelled distress. She was suddenly
pitiful and pretty. ‘I suppose I ought to go and
kill this swine,’ I said. ‘I feel more like killing
you.’

“ ‘Kill me,’ she said. ‘I wish you would.’

254

THE DREAM

“ ‘What’s his name? Where is he now?’

“ ‘He doesn’t matter a rap,’ said Hetty. ‘You
may hang for me if you like, but you shan’t hang
for a thing like that. I tell you he doesn’t matter.
He’s a dirty accident. He happened.’

“ ‘You’re shielding him.’

“ ‘Him!’ she said. ‘I’m shielding you.’

“I stared at her. Again came a moment when
I seemed to hang undecided at the parting of two
courses, and again I decided to explode into rage.
‘My God!’ I cried, and then louder and standing
up, ‘My God!’ Then I ranted at her. ‘I suppose
I’ve only got myself to blame for all this. What
did I know of what you were before I met you?
I guess I wasn’t the first and I guess he won’t be
the last. What do names matter? I guess you
thanked Heaven for a green dud when you met
me.’ And so on. I paced about the room as I
raved.

“She sat up on the bed, her hair disordered and
her eyes tearful, regarding me with a still and
mournful face. ‘Oh, Harry!’ she would say ever
and again, or ‘Oh, Boy!’ while I let my clumsy
fancy rove through a wilderness of coarse reproaches.
Ever and again I would come up to her and stand
over her. ‘Tell me his name,’ I would shout and
she would shake her head.

“At last I was dressed. I looked at my watch.
‘Five.’

“ ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked.

“ ‘I don’t know. Go, I suppose. I can’t stay here.
I should be sick. I shall get most of my things
together and go. I’ll find a lodging somewhere.

THE - DREAM

255

It’s nearly dawn. I’ll go before you need get up.
Meanwhile I’ll sit in the other room. I can lie
on the sofa for a bit.’

“ ‘But the fire’s not lit!’ she said, ‘and it’s cold.
It’s not even laid. And you’ll need some coffee!’

“She stared at me with eyes full of solicitude.

“And forthwith she shuffled out of bed and slipped
her feet into her bedroom slippers and put on a gay
dressing-gown that had been a great delight to us
—ten days ago. She w T ent meekly by me, moving
her poor heavy body rather wearily, and found some
fire-lighters in a cupboard and knelt by the fire¬
place and began to rake out the ashes of the over¬
night fire. I made no movement to prevent her.
I began to collect together various books and small
possessions I intended to take with me.

“She was only apprehending the situation very
slowly. She turned to me in the middle of her
fire-lighting. 'I suppose you’ll leave me a little
money to go on with?’ she said.

“That gave me a base opportunity. ‘I’ll leave
you money all right,’ I sneered. ‘I suppose I’ve
got to keep you until we’re free. Then it will be
his job. Or the next man’s.’

“She occupied herself with the fire. She filled
a kettle and put it ready. Then she sat down in
an arm-chair by the hearth. Her face was white
and drawn but she shed no tears. I went to the
window and pulled up the blind and stared at the
street outside with its street lamps still alight;
everything was gaunt and bleak in the colourless
cold horror of the earliest dawn.

“ ‘I shall go to mother,’ she said, shivering and

256

THE DREAM

pulling her dressing-gown about her shoulders. ‘It
will be dreadful for her to know what has happened.
But she’s kind. She’ll be kinder than anyone. . . .
I shall go to her.’

“ ‘You can do what you like/ I said.

“‘Harry!’ she said. ‘I’ve never loved any man

but you. If I could kill this child- If it would

please you if I killed this child-’

“She spoke with white lips. ‘Yes. I tried all
I knew. Some things I couldn’t bring myself to
do. And now it’s a thing that’s alive. . . .’

“We stared at one another in silence for some
moments.

“‘No!’ I said at last. ‘I can’t stand it. I can’t
endure it. Nothing can alter it now. You tell a
tale. How do I know? You’ve cheated once and
you can cheat again. You gave yourself to that
swine. If I live to a hundred I’ll never forgive that.
You gave yourself. How do I know you didn’t
tempt him? You gave. You can go. Go where you
gave yourself! They’re things no decent man can
forgive. Things that are dirty to forgive. He stole
you and you let him steal you and he can have you.

I wish- If you’d had the beginnings of a sense

of honour you’d never have let me come back to
you. To think of these last days here. And you—-
you with this secret next your heart! The filthiness
of it! You—you, whom I’ve loved.’

“I was weeping.”

Sarnac paused and stared into the fire. “Yes,”
he said, “I was weeping. And the tears I shed—
it is wonderful—the tears I shed were tears of the
purest self-pity.

THE DREAM

257

“And all the time I saw the thing from my own
standpoint alone, blind to the answering tragedy in
Hetty’s heart. And the most grotesque thing is that
all the time she was getting me coffee and that when
it was ready I drank her coffee! At the end she
wanted to kiss me, to kiss me ‘good-bye,’ she said,
and I rebuffed her and struck her when she came
near me. I meant only to thrust her back but my
hand clenched at the opportunity. ‘Harry!’ she
whispered. She stood like a stunned thing watching
me go, and then turned suddenly and swiftly and
ran back to the bedroom.

“I slammed the outer door and went downstairs
into the empty morning Richmond streets; alto¬
gether empty of traffic they were, under the flush of
dawn.

“I carried my bag towards the railway station
that would take me to London; my bag was heavy
with the things I had brought away, and it dragged
upon my arms, and I felt myself a tragically ill-used
but honourably self-vindicated young man.”

§ 7

“Oh, poor little things!” cried Starlight. “Oh!
poor, little, pitiful pitiless creatures! This story
hurts me. I couldn’t endure it, if it were anything
more than a dream. Why were they all so hard
upon each other and so deaf to the sorrow in each
other?”

“We knew no better. This world now has a tem¬
pered air. In this world we breathe mercy with our
first fluttering gasp. We are so taught and trained
to think of others that their pain is ours. But two

258

THE DREAM

thousand years ago men and women were half-way
back to crude Nature. Our motives took us un¬
awares. We breathed infections. Our food was
poisoned. Our passions were fevers. We were only
beginning to learn the art of being human.”

“But didn’t Fanny-?” began Firefly.

“Yes,” said Willow; “didn’t Fanny, who was nat¬
urally so wise about love, didn’t she take you in
hand and send you back to forgive and help your
wretched Hetty?”

“Fanny heard my version of our story first,” said
Sarnac. “She never realised the true values of the
business until it was too late to stop the divorce.
When I told her that Hetty had lived a life of de¬
pravity in London while I was in the trenches, she
heard me with amazement but never doubted my
word.

“ ‘And she seemed such a dear,’ said Fanny. ‘She
seemed so in love with you. It’s wonderful how
different women are! There’s women who seem to
change into something else directly they get out of
sight of you round a corner. I liked your Hetty,
Harry. There was something sweet about her, be
what she may. I never dreamt she’d deceive you
and let you down. Fancy!—going about London
picking up men! It’s just as though she’d done it
to me.

“Matilda Good too was wonderfully sympathetic.
‘No woman goes wrong only just once,’ said Matilda.
‘You’re right to end it.’ The Miltons were giving
up her drawing-room floor, I could have it, if I cared
to take it. I was only too glad to take it and return
to my old home.

THE DREAM

259

“Hetty, I suppose, packed up her own belongings
as well as she could. She went down from Rich¬
mond to her mother’s farm at Payton Links, and
there it was her child was born.

“Now I want to tell you,” said Sarnac, “what is,
I believe, the most remarkable thing in all this story
I am telling you. I do not remember in all that time
right up to and including our divorce, that I felt
any impulse of pity or kindliness, much less of love,
towards Hetty. And yet in my dream I was very
much the same sort of man as I am to-day. I was
a man of the same type. But I was driven by a
storm of amazed and outraged pride and sexual
jealousy of the most frantic sort towards acts of
spite that are almost inconceivable here and now.
I was doing all I could to divorce Hetty in such a
way as to force her into marriage with Sumner—
for that was the man’s name—because I had learnt
that he was a hopelessly bad character and because
I believed he would make her miserable and mar
her life altogether. I wanted to do that to punish
her, to fill her with bitter regrets for her treatment
of me. But at the same time it drove me to the
verge of madness to think that he should ever possess
her again. If my wishes could have been given
creative force, Hetty would have gone to Sumner
disfigured and diseased. They would have come
together again amidst circumstances of horrible
cruelty!”

“Sarnac!” cried Sunray, “that you should even
dream such things!”

“Dream! It is as men were. It is as they are,
except for the education and the free happiness

260

THE DREAM

that release us. For we are not fourscore genera¬
tions from the Age of Confusion, and that was but
a few thousands more from the hairy ape-men who
bayed the moon in the primeval forests of Europe.
Then it was the Old Man in lust and anger ruled
his herd of women and children and begot us all.
And in the Age of Confusion after the Great Wars
man was, and he still is, the child of that hairy Old
Ape-Man. Don’t I shave myself daily? And don’t
we educate and legislate with our utmost skill and
science to keep the old beast within bounds? But
our schools in the days of Harry Mortimer Smith
were still half-way back to the cave; our science was
only beginning. We had no sexual education at
all, only concealments and repressions. Our code
was still the code of jealousy—thinly disguised.
The pride and self-respect of a man was still bound
up with the animal possession of women—the pride
and self-respect of most women was by a sort of
reflection bound up with the animal possession of a
man. We felt that this possession was the keystone
of life. Any failure in this central business involved
a monstrous abasement, and against that our poor
souls sought blindly for the most extravagant con¬
solations. We hid things, we perverted and misrep¬
resented things, we evaded the issue. Man is a
creature which under nearly every sort of stress
releases hate and malign action, and we were then
still subjected to the extremest stresses.

“But I will not go on apologising for Harry Mor¬
timer Smith. He was what the world made him
and so are we. And in my dream I went about that
old world, doing my work, controlling my outward

THE DREAM 261

behaviour and spending all the force of my wounded
love for Hetty in scheming for her misery.

“And one thing in particular was of immense
importance to my tormented being. It was that I
should get another lover quickly, that I should dispel
the magic of Hetty’s embraces, lay the haunting
ghost of my desire for her. I had to persuade myself
that I had never really loved her and replace her in
my heart by someone I could persuade myself was
my own true love.

“So I sought the company of Milly Kimpton
again. We had been close companions before the
War, and it was not difficult to persuade myself that
I had always been a little in love with her. Always
she had been more than a little in love with me. I
told her my story of my marriage and she was hurt
for my sake and indignant beyond means with the
Hetty I presented to her.

“She married me within a week of the completion
of my divorce.”

§ 8

“Milly was faithful and Milly was kind; she was
a cooling refuge from the heat and distresses of
my passion. She had a broad, candid face that
never looked either angry or miserable; she held
her countenance high, smiling towards heaven with
a pleasant confidence and self-satisfaction; she was
very fair and she was broad-shouldered for a woman.
She was tender but not passionate; she was intelli¬
gently interested in things but without much whim
or humour. She was nearly a year and a half older
than I. She had, as people used to say, ‘taken a

262

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great fancy’ to me when first I came into the firm,
a crude and inexperienced youngster. She had seen
me rise very rapidly to Mr. Cheeseman’s position
on the editorial staff—he had been transferred to
the printing side—and at times she had helped me
greatly. We were both popular in Thunderstone
House, and when we married there was a farewell
dinner to Milly, who gave up her position then in
the counting-house; there were speeches and a won¬
derful wedding-present of dinner-knives and silver
forks and spoons in a brass-bound chest of oak with
a flattering inscription on a silver plate. There had
been a good deal of sympathy with Milly in Thun¬
derstone House, especially among the girls, and a
good deal of indignation at me when my first mar¬
riage occurred, and my belated recognition of my
true destiny was considered a very romantic and
satisfactory end to the story.

“We secured a convenient little house in a row
of stucco houses all built together to have one archi¬
tectural effect, called Chester Terrace, close to one
of the inner parks of London known as Regent’s
Park. Milly, I discovered, had a little fortune of
nearly two thousand pounds, and so she was able to
furnish this house very prettily according to current
taste, and in this house in due course she bore me a
son. I rejoiced very greatly and conspicuously over
this youngster’s arrival. I think you will under¬
stand how essential it was to my obsession for
defeating and obliterating Hetty that Milly should
bear me a child.

“I worked very hard during that first year of
married life and on the whole I was happy. But it

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263

was not a very rich nor a very deep sort of happiness.
It was a happiness made up of rather hard and
rather superficial satisfactions. In a sense I loved
Milly very dearly; her value was above rubies, she
was honest and sweet and complaisant. She liked
me enormously, she was made happy by my atten¬
tions; she helped me, watched for my comfort,
rejoiced at the freshness and vigour of my work.
Yet we did not talk very freely and easily together.
I could not let my mind run on before her; I had
to shape what I said to her feelings and standards,
and they were very different feelings and standards
from my own. She was everything a wife should
be except in one matter; she was not for me that
particular dear companion for whom the heart of
every human being craves, that dear companion with
whom you are happy and free and safe. That dear
companionship I had met—and I had thrust it from
me. Does it come twice in a life to anyone?”

“How should I know?” said Sunray.

“We know better than to reject it,” said Radiant.

“Perhaps after many years,” said Willow, answer¬
ing Sarnac’s question, “after one has healed and
grown and changed.”

“Milly and I were close friends indeed, but we
were never dear companions. I had told Hetty
about my sister Fanny on the evening of our first
day together when we walked over the hills, she was
instantly sure that she would love Fanny, Fanny had
seemed very brave and romantic to Hetty’s imagina¬
tion; but I did not tell Milly of Fanny until close
upon our marriage. You will say that it was not
Milly’s fault that I was shy with her on Fanny’s

264

THE DREAM

account, but assuredly it was a fault in our relation¬
ship. And it was clear that Milly accepted Fanny
on my account and refrained from too searching a
commentary because of me. Milly believed pro¬
foundly in the institution of marriage and in the
obligation of an unlimited chastity upon women.
Tt is a pity she cannot marry this man,’ said Milly,
anticipating perplexities. ‘It must make everything
so inconvenient for her—and everyone who knows
her. It must be so difficult to introduce her to
people.’

“ ‘You needn’t do that,’ I said.

“ ‘My people are old-fashioned.’

“ ‘They needn’t know,’ I said.

“ ‘That would be the easier way for me, Harry.’

“I found my own declarations of affection for
Fanny considerably chilled by the effort Milly made
to be generous in the matter.

“I found it still more difficult to tell her that
Fanny’s lover was Newberry.

“ ‘Then is that how you got into Thunderstone
House?’ asked Milly when at last I got to that
revelation.

“ ‘It’s how I got my chance there,’ I admitted.

“ ‘I didn’t think it was like that. I thought you’d
made your way in.’

“ ‘I’ve made my way up. I’ve never been
favoured.’

“ ‘Yes—but- Do you think people know,

Harry? They’d say all sorts of things.’

“You perceive that Milly was not a very clever
woman and also that she was very jealous of my

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265

honour. T don’t think anyone knows who matters/
I said. ‘Neither I nor Fanny advertise.’

“But it was clear Milly did not like the situation.
She would have much preferred a world without
sister Fanny. She had no curiosity to see this sister
that I loved so dearly or to find any good in her.
On various small but quite valid scores she put off
going to see her for a whole week. And always I
had to remind her of Fanny and speak of Fanny first
before Fanny could be talked about. In all other
matters Milly was charming and delightful to me,
but as far as she could contrive it she banished
Fanny from our world. She could not see how
much of my affection went also into banishment.

“Their meeting when at last it came about was
bright rather than warm. An invisible atherma-
nous screen had fallen not only between Milly and
Fanny but between Fanny and myself. Milly had
come, resolved to be generous and agreeable in spite
of Fanny’s disadvantageous status, and I think she
was a little disconcerted by Fanny’s dress and fur¬
niture, for Milly was always very sensitive to furni¬
ture and her sensitiveness had been enhanced by
our own efforts to equip a delightful home on a
sufficient but not too extravagant expenditure. I
had always thought Fanny’s furnishings very pretty,
but it had never occurred to me that they were, as
Milly put it, ‘dreadfully good.’ But there was a red
lacquer cabinet that Milly said afterwards might be
worth as much as a hundred pounds, and she added
one of those sentences that came upon one like an
unexpected thread of gossamer upon the face: ‘It
doesn’t seem right somehow.’

266

THE DREAM

“Fanny’s simple dress I gathered was far too good
also. Simple dresses were the costliest in those days
of abundant material and insufficient skill.

“But these were subsequent revelations, and at
the time I did not understand why there should
be an obscure undertone of resentment in Milly’s
manner, nor why Fanny was displaying a sort of
stiff sweetness quite foreign to my impression of
her.

“ ‘It’s wonderful to meet you at last,’ said Fanny.
‘He’s talked about you for years. I can remember
once long before—long before the War—and every¬
thing—at Hampton Court. I can remember sitting
on those seats by the river and his talking about
you.’

“ ‘I remember that,’ I said, though it wasn’t the
part about Milly that had stuck in my memory.

“ ‘We used to go about together no end in those
days,’ said Fanny. ‘He was the dearest of brothers.’

“ ‘I hope he’ll still be,’ said Milly very kindly.

“ ‘A son’s a son till he gets a wife,’ said Fanny,
quoting an old-woman’s proverb.

“ ‘You mustn’t say that,’ said Milly. ‘I hope
you’ll come to see us—quite often.’

“ ‘I’d love to come,’ said Fanny. ‘You’re lucky
to get a house so easily, these days.’

“ ‘It isn’t quite ready yet,’ said Milly. ‘But as
soon as ever it is we must find some day when
you are free.’

“ ‘I’m often free,’ said Fanny.

“ ‘We’ll fix a clay,’ said Milly, obviously quite
resolute to ensure that we had no unexpected calls
from Fanny when other people might be about.

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267

“ Tt’s nice you have been in the counting-house
and understanding all about his work/ said Fanny.

“ ‘My people didn’t like my going into business
at all/ said Milly. ‘But it’s lucky I did.’

“ ‘Lucky for Harry/ said Fanny. ‘Are your—
people London people?’

“ ‘Dorset/ said Milly. ‘They didn’t like my com¬
ing to London. They’re just a little bit churchy
and old-fashioned, you know. But it’s college or
business, I said, and you don’t find me staying at
home to dust and put out the flowers. One has to
take a firm line with one’s people at times. Didn’t
you find that so? There was a convenient aunt in
Bedford Park to secure the proprieties and head off
the otherwise inevitable latch-key, and it was busi¬
ness instead of college because my best uncle, Uncle
Hereward—he’s the Vicar of Peddlebourne—objects
to the higher education of women. And there was
also a question of finance.’

“ ‘It must be interesting for Harry to meet your
people,’ said Fanny.

“ ‘He’s completely conquered Aunt Rachel/ said
Milly. ‘Though she started hostile. Naturally, as
I’m about the only Ivimpton of three generations
they pitched their expectations high. They’d like
me to have a husband with a pedigree a yard long.’

“I felt Milly was rather over-emphasising the
county family side of the Kimptons—her father was
a veterinary surgeon near Wimborne—-but I did not
appreciate the qualities in Fanny’s bearing and fur¬
niture that were putting Milly into this self-assertive
mood.

“They went on to talk with a certain flavour of

268

THE DREAM

«

unreality of the hygienic and social advantages of
Regent’s Park. ‘It’s easy to get to for one’s friends/
said Milly. ‘And quite a lot of interesting people,
actors and critics and writers and all that sort of
people, live round and about there. Of course
Harry will want to know more and more of the
artistic and literary world now. I expect we’ll have
to have a Day for them and give them tea and
sandwiches. It’s a bore, but it’s necessary, you
know. Harry’s got to know people/

“She smiled at me between pride and patronage.

“ ‘Harry’s going up in the world,’ said my sister.

“ ‘That’s what makes it all so wonderful,’ said
Milly. ‘He’s a wonderful brother for you/

“She began to praise the beauty of Fanny’s flat,
and Fanny offered to show her all over it. They
were away some time and I went to the window,
wishing stupidly after the manner of a man that
they could somehow contrive to be a little different
and a little warmer with each other. Didn’t they
both love me and shouldn’t that be a bond of sister¬
hood between them?

“Then came tea, one of Fanny’s wonderful teas,
but I was no longer the indiscriminate devourer of
teas that I had been. Milly praised it all like a
visiting duchess.

“ ‘Well,’ said Milly at last with the air of one
who has many appointments, ‘it’s time to go I’m
afraid. . . .’

“I had been watching Fanny very closely through¬
out this visit and contrasting her guarded and
polished civilities with the natural warmth of her

THE DREAM

269

reception of Hetty, half a year before. I felt I
could not wait for another occasion before I had
a word or two with her. So I kissed her good-bye—
even her kiss had changed—and she and Milly
hesitated and kissed, and I went down past the
landing with Milly and heard the door close above.
Tve left my gloves/ I said suddenly. ‘You go on
down. I won’t be a moment.’ And I darted back
upstairs.

“Fanny did not come to the door immediately.

“ ‘What is it, Harry?’ she said, when she appeared.

“‘Gloves!’ said I. ‘No! Here they are in my
pocket. Silly of me! . . . You do like her, Fanny?
You think she’s all right, don’t you? She’s a little
shy with you, but she’s a dear.’

“Fanny looked at me. I thought her eyes were
hard. ‘She’s all right,’ she said. ‘Quite all right.
You’ll never have to divorce her, Harry.’

“ ‘I didn’t know. I want you to—like her. I
thought—you didn’t seem quite warm.’

“ ‘Silly old Harry! ’ said Fanny, with a sudden
return to her old manner. And she took me and
kissed me like a loving sister again.

“I went down two steps from the door and turned.

“ ‘I’d hate it/ I said, ‘if you didn’t think she was
all right.’

“ ‘She’s all right,’ said Fanny. ‘And it’s Good

Luck to you, Harry. It’s- You see it’s about

Good-Bye for me. I shan’t be seeing very much
of you now with that clever wife of yours to take
you about. Who’s so well- connected. But Good
Luck, old Brudder! Oh! always Good Luck!’

270

THE DREAM

“Her eyes were brimming with tears.

“ ‘God send you are happy, Harry dear—after
your fashion. It’s—it’s different. . . .’

“She stopped short. She was weeping.

“She banged her door upon me, and I stood
puzzled for a moment and then went down to Milly.”

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH

LOVE AND DEATH

§ 1

“In the two years that followed I learnt to love
and trust my stiff-spirited wife more and more.
She was very brave in a conscious and deliberate
way, very clear-headed, very honest. I saw her
fight, and it was not an easy fight, to bring our son
into the world, and that sort of crisis was a seal
between man and woman in those days even as it
is to-day. If she never got to any just intuitions
about my thoughts and feelings I did presently
arrive at a fairly clear sense of hers. I could feel
for her ambitions and humiliations. She worked
hard to make our home bright and efficient. She had
a taste for sound and ‘solid’ things and temperate
harmonies. In that old world, encumbered with
possessions and with an extreme household auton¬
omy, servants were a very important matter indeed
and she managed ours with just that measured kind¬
liness and just that avoidance of intimacy that was
needed by the social traditions of the time. She
had always been intelligently interested in the
internal politics of Thunderstone House and she
showed the keenest desire for my success there. Til
see you a director before ten years,’ she said. And
I worked very hard indeed and not merely for

271

272

THE DREAM

ambition’s sake. I really understood and believed
in the educational importance of that great slovenly
business. Newberry came to recognise in me a
response to his own ideas. He would consult me
about new schemes and the modification of old
procedure. He relied on me more and more and
talked with me more and more frequently. And
it is a queer thing to recall that by a sort of con¬
vention between us we never mentioned or alluded
to my sister Fanny in any of our discussions.

“I changed a good deal during my first two and
a half years of married life. I matured and hard¬
ened. I became a man of the world. I was put
up for and elected a member of a good club and
developed my gift for talk. I met a widening
variety of people, and some of them were quite
distinguished people, and I found they did not
overawe me. I possessed a gift for caustic com¬
mentary that gained me some reputation as a wit,
and I felt a growing interest in the showy and sterile
game of party politics. My ambitions grew. I was
active; I was self-satisfied. I had largely forgotten
my intense sexual humiliation. But I was not a
very happy man. My life was like a handsome,
well-appointed room with a north light; the bowls
were full of cut-flowers but the sunlight never
came in.”

§ 2

“For two years and a half I saw nothing of Hetty
and it was not my fault that I ever saw her again.
I did everything I could to eradicate her from my
existence. I destroyed her photographs and every

THE DREAM

273

little vestige of her that might distress me by its
memories. If I caught myself in a reverie in which
she figured I forced my attention to other things.
Sometimes when I made a new success I had a flash
of desire that she should witness it. Ugly, I agree,
but is it not what we still are—except for civilisa¬
tion? She came back sometimes in dreams, but
they were anger-soaked dreams. And I cultivated
my pride and love for Milly. With increasing
prosperity Milly’s skill in dressing herself developed;
she became a very handsome, effective woman; she
gave herself to me with a smiling sense of temperate
and acceptable giving.

“In those days we had not learnt to analyse our
motives. We were much less observant of ourselves
than men and women are to-day. I had set my
mind upon loving Milly and I did not realise that
the essential thing in loving is a thing beyond our
wills. Fanny and Hetty I loved by nature and
necessity, but my days were now far too completely
apportioned between work and Milly for much com¬
panionship with Fanny to survive, and Hetty in
my heart was like one of those poor shrivelled corpses
of offending monks they walled up in the monas¬
teries during the Age of Christendom in Europe.
But I found now a curious liveliness in my interest
in women in general. I did not ask what these
wanderings of attention signified; I was ashamed
of them but I gave way to them. Even when I
was in Milly’s company I would look at other women
and find a vague excitement if the intent of my
glances was returned.

“And I began to read novels in a new spirit,

274

THE DREAM

though I did not know why I was taking to novels;
I was reading them, I see now, for the sake of the
women 1 found in them. I do not know, Sunray,
whether you realise how much the novels and plays
of those days served to give men and women love-
phantoms with whom they made imaginative excur¬
sions. We successful and respectable ones went
our dignified and satisfied ways, assuaging the thin
protests of our starved possibilities with such un¬
substantial refreshment.

“But it was because of that wandering eye for
women that I encountered Hetty again. It was in
the springtime that I came upon her, either in
March or very early April, in some public gardens
quite near to Chester Terrace. These gardens were
not in my direct way from the underground railway
station, which took me to and fro between home
and business and my house, but I was in no hurry
for Milly’s tea-party and the warmth and sunlight
drew- me to this place of blossom and budding green.
They were w^hat we should call spring gardens now¬
adays, small but cleverly laid out for display with
an abundant use of daffodil, narcissus, hyacinth,
almond-blossom and the like, with hard paths and
seats placed to command happy patches of colour.
On one of these seats a woman was sitting alone
with her back to me looking at a patch of scyllas.
I was struck by the loveliness of her careless pose.
Such discoveries of the dear beauty that hides in
the world wrnuld stir me like a challenge and then
stab me with pain. She was dressed very poorly
and simply, but her dingy clothing was no more

THE DREAM 275

than the smoked glass one uses to see the brightness
of the sun.

“I slackened my pace as I went past and glanced
back to see her face. And I saw the still face of
Hetty, very grave and sorrowful, Hetty, no longer
a girl but a woman, looking at the flowers and quite
unheedful of my regard.

“Something greater than pride or jealousy seized
me then. I went a few steps farther and stopped
and turned, as though no other thing was possible.

“At that she became aware of me. She looked
up, doubted, and recognised me.

“She watched me with that motionless face of
hers as I came and sat down beside her. I spoke
in a voice of astonishment on the edge of a storm
of emotion. ‘Hetty/ I said, T couldn’t go past you!’

“She did not answer immediately. ‘Are you-?’

she began and stopped. ‘I suppose we were bound
to meet again,’ she said, ‘sooner or later. You look
as if you had grown, Harry. You look well and
prosperous.’

“ ‘Do you live in this part of London?’ I asked.

“ ‘Camden Town just now,’ she said. ‘We move
about.’

“ ‘You married—Sumner?’

“ ‘What did you expect me to do? What else
was there to do? I’ve drunk my cup to the dregs,
Harry.’

“ ‘But- You had the child?’

“ ‘It died—it died all right. Poor little mite.
And my mother died a year ago.’

“ ‘Well, you’ve got Sumner.’

“ ‘I’ve got Sumner.’

276

THE DREAM

“At any time before that meeting I should have
exulted over the death of Sumner’s child, but in
the presence of Hetty’s misery that old hatred would
not come back for its gratification. I was looking
at her face which was so familiar and so changed,
and it was as if 1 woke up again to love for her after
two years and a half of insensibility. What a beaten
and unhappy thing she was—she whom I had loved
and hated sc bitterly,

“ Tt seems a long way back now to Kent, Harry
—and mother’s farm,’ she said.

“ 'You’ve parted with it?’

“ 'Farm and furniture—and mostly it’s gone.
Sumner bets. He’s betted most of it away. It’s
hard, you see, to find a job but easy to fancy a
winner. Which doesn’t win. . . .’

“ 'My father used to do that,’ I said. ‘I’d like
to shoot every race-horse in England.’

" 'I hated selling the farm,’ she said. ‘I sold the
farm and came into this dingy old London. Sumner
dragged me here and he’s dragging me down. It’s
not his fault; it’s how he’s made. But when a

spring day comes like this-! I think of Kent

and the winds on the Downs and the blackthorn in
the hedges and the little yellow noses of the prim¬
roses and the first elder leaves coming out, until
I want to cry and scream. But there’s no getting
out of it. Here I am. I’ve come to look at these
flowers here. What’s the good? They just hurt
me.’

“She stared at the flowers.

“'My God!’ I said, ‘but this hurts me too. I
didn’t expect-’

THE DREAM 277

“ ‘What did you expect?’ she asked, and turned
that still face of hers to me and silenced me.

“ ‘I don’t see that it should hurt you,’ she said.
‘I brought it on myself. You didn’t do it. It hap¬
pened to me. It was my fault. Though why God
made me love beautiful things—and then set a trap
for me and made me fool enough to fall into it-!’

“Silence fell between us.

“ ‘Meeting you like this,’ I began presently, ‘makes
me see things—so differently. You see—in those
old days—in some ways you seemed so much
stronger than I was. I didn’t understand. ... I

see- This makes me feel- I ought to have

taken better care of you.’

“ ‘Or shown me mercy. I was dirty and shame¬
ful—yes. All that. But you were merciless, Harry.
Men are merciless to women. I did—all through
—I loved you, Harry. In a way I’ve always loved
you and I love you now. When I looked up and

saw it was you coming back to me- For a

minute you were just like the old Harry. For a

moment- It was like Spring coming real. . . .

But it’s no good talking like that now, Harry. It’s
too late.’

“ ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘Too late. . . .’

“She watched my face through a long pause.
I weighed my words when I spoke. ‘Up to now,’

I said, ‘I’ve never forgiven. Now- Now I see

you here I wish—I wish to God—I had forgiven
you. And made a fight for it with you. We
might- Suppose, Hetty, suppose I had forgiven

“ ‘Harry dear,’ she said softly, ‘you don’t want

278

THE DREAM

to be seen here making a woman cry. We won’t
talk of that. Tell me about yourself. I’ve heard
you married again. A beautiful woman. Sumner
saw r that I heard of that. Are you happy, Harry?
You look prosperous, and everyone isn’t prosperous
these post-war times.’

“ 'That’s all so-and-so, Hetty. I work hard. I’ve
got ambitions. I’m still a publisher’s assistant at
the old place but I’m near to being a director. I’m

high up. My wife- She’s a dear and a great

help to me. . . . Somehow meeting you . . . My
God! Hetty, what a mess we made of things!
It’s all very well, but the second time of marrying

isn’t like the first. You and I- I’m a sort of

blood brother to you and nothing can change it.
The wood—that little wood where you kissed me!
Why did we smash it up, Hetty? Why did we do
it? Two fools who’d got so precious a thing!
That’s all past. But hate is dead between us.
That’s past too. If there was anything I could do
for you now I would do it.’

"A gleam of the old humour came, ‘If you could
kill Sumner,’ she said, ‘and smash the world and
destroy the memories of three years . . . It’s no
good, Harry. I ought to have kept myself clean.
And you—you might have been gentler with me.’

“ ‘I couldn’t, Hetty.’

“ ‘I knew you couldn’t. And I couldn’t foresee
that my blood would betray me one evening. And
here we are! Like meeting after we are dead.
Spring comes now but it comes for other people.
All these little crocus trumpets—like a brass band

THE DREAM 279

it is—they are trumpeting up the next lot of lovers.
Better luck to them!’

“We sat still for a time. In the background
of my mind Milly and her assembled tea-cups be¬
came evident as a faint urgency. ‘You’re late/
she’d say.

“ ‘Where are you living, Hetty?’ I asked. ‘What
is your address?’

“She shook her head after a moment’s thought.
‘Better you shouldn’t know.’

“ ‘But somehow I might help.’

“ ‘It would only disturb us all. I’ve got my cup
—of dirty water—to drink. I’ve got to stand what
I’m in for. What could you do to help me?’

“ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘my address anyhow is easy to

keep in mind. It’s just what it was when we-

In the days when we lived- Thunderstone

House it is. Some day there might be some¬
thing-’

“ ‘It’s good of you.’

“We stood up face to face, and as we stood there
a thousand circumstances vanished and nothing re¬
mained but our hurt and injured selves. ‘Good-bye,
Hetty,’ I said. ‘Good luck.’

“Our hands met. ‘Good luck to you, Harry. It’s
no good, but I’m glad we met like this. And to
find you forgive me a little at last.’ ”

§ 3

“That meeting had a profound effect upon me.
It banished much aimless reverie from my mind;
it unlocked the prison in which a whole multitude
of forbidden thoughts had been confined. I thought

280

THE DREAM

enormously of Hetty. They were vague and im¬
possible thoughts; they came in the night, on the
way to business, even during slack moments in
business hours; rehearsals of dramatised encounters,
explanations, magic turns of circumstances that
suddenly restored our lost world to us. I tried to
suppress these cloudy imaginations but with little
avail; they overspread my mental skies in spite
of me. I can’t tell you how many times I walked
through those gardens in Regent’s Park; that detour
became my normal route from the station to my
home. And I would even go out of my customary
way along some side-path because I had caught
a glimpse far off, between the tree-branches and
the flower-beds, of a solitary woman. But Pletty
never came back there.

“In my brooding over Hetty a jealousy and hatred
of Sumner developed steadily. I do not think I
had any desire for Hetty myself but I wanted
intensely to get her away from him. This hostility
to Sumner was the ugly undertow of my remorse
and re-awakened love of Hetty. He was the evil
thing that had deprived me of Hetty. I did not
reflect for a moment that it was I with my relentless
insistence upon divorce that had forced her back to
him.

“And all this dreaming and brooding and futile
planning, all this body of desire for something more
to happen between Hetty and myself, went on with¬
out my breathing a word of it to any living soul.
It was on my conscience that it was disloyal to
Milly, and I even made a half-hearted attempt to
tell Milly that I had met Hetty and been shocked

THE DREAM

281

at her poverty and unhappiness. I wanted to bring
her into my own state of mind and have her feel as
I did. I threw out a remark one day—we had gone
to Hampstead Heath for a walk one afternoon—that
I had once walked along that ridge by the Round
Pond with Hetty during my last leave. ‘I wonder
how she is living now/ I said.

“Milly did not answer immediately, and when
I looked at her her face was flushed and hard. T
hoped you had forgotten her/ she said in a suffocated
voice.

“ ‘This brought it back to me/

“ ‘I try never to think of her. You don’t know
what that woman meant to me—the humiliation.

“ ‘It was not only for myself/ she added. ‘It
was for you.’

“She said no more but it was manifest how terribly
the mere name of Hetty had disturbed her.”

“Poor little things!” cried Firefly. “How insanely
jealous you all were!”

“And I did not go to Fanny and tell her about
Hetty for a time. I had misrepresented Hetty to
her as a figure of common depravity and I found it
difficult to put that right. Nowadays I did not see
so much of Fanny as I had formerly done. She
was living half-way across London from me. Her
relations with Newberry were now much more public
than they had been and she had developed a circle
of acquaintances who cared for her. But this pub¬
licity made Milly more stiff towards her because
she feared that a scandal would be made about
Fanny in relation to my position in the firm of
Crane & Newberry. Near Pangbourne, Newberry

282

THE DREAM

had taken a bungalow and there Fanny would spend
whole weeks at a time, quite out of our range.

“But presently a situation developed which sent
me post-haste to Fanny for help and advice.”

§ 4

“Suddenly in July, when I w r as beginning to think
I should never hear from her again, Hetty appealed
to me for help. Would I meet her one evening,
she asked, by the fountain in the park near the
Zoological Gardens, and then we could get chairs
and she would tell me what she had in mind. She
did not want me to write her a letter, Sumner had
become very jealous of her, and so would I put an
advertisement in the Daily Express with the letters
A B C D and giving the hour and date. I made an
appointment for the earliest possible evening.

“Instead of the despondent and spiritless Hetty
I had met in the spring I found a Hetty high strung
and excited. ‘1 want some place where we shan’t
be seen,’ she said as I came up to her. She took
my arm to turn me about, and led the way towards
two green chairs standing apart a little away from
the main walk that here traversed the park. I noted
that she was still wearing the same shabby dress she
had had on our previous encounter. Her manner
with me was quite different from the manner of our
former meeting. There was something familiar and
confident about her as though in between she had
met me in imagination a multitude of times—as no
doubt she had.

“ ‘You meant all you said, Harry, when we talked
before?’ she began.

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283

“ ‘Everything/

“ ‘You will help me if you can?’

“ ‘Everything I can/

“ ‘Suppose I asked you for some money?’

“ ‘Naturally.’

“ ‘I want to get away from Sumner. I have a
chance. I could do it.’

“ ‘Tell me about it, Hetty. All I can do, I will.’

“ ‘Things have changed, Harry, since that day
we met. I’d got into a sort of despairing state. I
took whatever came. Seeing you changed me. I
don’t know why but it did. Perhaps I was going
to change anyhow. But I can’t stand being with
Sumner any longer. And there’s a chance now.
I shall want a lot of money—sixty or seventy
pounds.’

“I thought. ‘That’s quite possible, Hetty. If
you can wait a week or so. Ten days say.’

“ ‘You see I have a friend, a girl who married
a Canadian. She stayed here to have her child
when he went home and now she goes out to him.
She’s been ill; she’s not very strong and she doesn’t
want to face the voyage alone. It would be easy
for me to get out there with her as her cousin and
companion. If I had an outfit- We’ve dis¬

cussed it all. She knows someone who could man¬
age about a passport for me. In my maiden name.
That’s the scheme. I could have my outfit sent to
her place. I could slip away/

“ ‘You’d take another name? Begin again over
there?’

“‘Yes. . . /

“I sat considering this project. It pleased me.

284 THE DREAM

‘There need be no trouble about the money/ I
said.

“ T can’t go on living with Sumner. You never
saw him. You don’t know what he’s like.’

“ ‘I’ve heard he was good looking.’

“‘Don’t I know that face—flushed and weak!
He’s a liar and a cheat. He has a conceit he can
best everyone. And he’s begun drinking. God
knows why I married him. It seemed the natural
thing somehow since you had divorced me. The
child had to have a father. . . . But he disgusts
me, Harry. He disgusts me. I can’t go on. I
can’t endure it. You can’t imagine it—in those
little lodgings—in the hot weather. To keep a
maudlin drunken man away from one. ... If I
hadn’t seen this way out something worse might
have happened.’

“ ‘Can’t you come away from him at once?’ I
asked. ‘Why should you ever go back to him?’

“ ‘No. I must get clear away or there will be
mischief. And you mustn’t be in it. He’d think
of you at once. If he had a hint it was you. That’s
what you have to do about the money and every¬
thing, letters or anything—get it to me without
your being mixed up with it. You must get me
money, not cheques. We mustn’t be seen to meet.
Even about here it’s risky. He’s got into a gang.
He’s been getting deeper and deeper into a rotten
set. They blackmail the bookies. They go about
with revolvers. They pass on things to one an¬
other. It grew out of betting and now they call it
getting a bit of their own back. ... If they spot
you in it, they’ll come for you.’

THE DREAM

285

“ ‘Trench warfare in London. I’ll risk it/

“ ‘You needn’t risk anything—if we are discreet.
If there was some one I could see—who’d hand
things on.’

“I thought at once of my sister Fanny.

“ ‘That would be safe/ said Hetty. ‘As safe as
could be. And I’d love to see her again. I loved
her when I met her. . . . But all this is awful
good of you, Harry. I don’t deserve a moment’s
kindness.

“ ‘Nonsense! I pushed you into the dirt, Hetty/

“ ‘I jumped into it/

“ ‘Fell into it. It’s nothing very much, Hetty,
to give you a hand to get out of it again/ ”

§ 5

“I went the next day to my sister Fanny to pre¬
pare her for Hetty’s call. Fanny sat in an arm-chair
and listened and watched my face as I told my
story, confessed how I had exaggerated Hetty’s
offence and asked for help. ‘I ought to have seen
her, Harry, before I took your word for it/ she said.
‘Of course, even now, I can’t imagine how a girl
who loves one man could ever stand the kiss of
another as she did, but then, as you say, she’d been
drinking. We women aren’t all made alike. There’s
all sorts make a world. Some girls—the backbone
goes out of them when they feel a man’s kisses.
You and me, Harry, we aren’t made like that. I’ve
been thinking while you sat talking there, how like
we both are to poor mother really—for all she quar¬
relled wuth me. We’ll grow hard presently if we
aren’t careful. And your Hetty was young and

286

THE DREAM

she didn’t know. Only once it was. And all her
life’s been spoilt by it! . . . I didn’t know it was
like that, Harry.’

“And my sister Fanny began to recall her im¬
pressions of Hetty. She recalled her fine anima¬
tion and the living interest of her talk. ‘When she
left I said to myself, she’s got wit; that’s the first
witty woman I’ve ever met. She’s got poetry in
her. Everything she says comes out a little dif¬
ferent from the things most people say. She says
things that come like flowers in a hedgerow. So she
did. Does she still?”

“ ‘I never thought of it like that before,’ I said.
‘I suppose she has a sort of poetry. Only the other
day—when I met her first. What was it she said?
Something.’

“ ‘It’s no good quoting, Harry. Witty things
should bloom where they grow. They’re no good
as cut-flowers. But you and I are fairly quick and
fairly clever, Harry, but we’ve never had any of
that.’

“ ‘I’ve always loved her talk,’ I said.

“I began to explain the situation to Fanny more
fully and to show how she could help in it. I was
not to see Hetty again; Fanny was to see her, pay
her the hundred pounds we could put together for
her, communicate with the friends she was to accom¬
pany and get her away. Fanny listened gravely and
agreed.

“Then she reflected.

“ ‘Why don’t you take her to Canada yourself,
Harry?’ she asked abruptly.”

THE DREAM

287

§ 6

“I did not answer Fanny for some moments.
Then I said, T don’t want to.’

" ‘I can see yon love Hetty still.’

“ 'Love. But I don’t want that.’

“ 'You don’t want to be with her?’

" 'It’s out of the question. Why ask a painful
thing like that? All that is dead.’

" 'Isn’t a resurrection possible? Why is it out of
the question? Pride?’

" 'No.’

" 'Why then?’

" 'Milly.’

" 'You don’t love Milly.’

" 'I won’t have you discuss that, Fanny. I do
love her.’

" ‘Not as you love Hetty.’

" 'Quite differently. But Milly trusts me. She
keeps faith with me. I’d as scon steal money—
from a child’s money-box—as go back on Milly.’

“ ‘It’s wonderful how fine men can be to the
wives they don’t love,’ said Fanny bitterly.

“ ‘Newberry’s different,’ I said. ‘I’ve got my
little son. I’ve got my work. And though you
will never have it, I love Milly.’

“ ‘In a way. Is she company for you? Is she
fun?’

“ 'I trust and love her. And as for Hetty, you
don’t understand about Hetty. I love her. I love
her enormously. But it’s like two ghosts meeting
by moonlight. We two are dead to each other and
—sorrowful. It isn’t as though it was anything

288

THE DREAM

like your case over again. I see Hetty in hell and
I’d do nearly anything in life to get her out. I
don’t even want to meet her. I want to get her
away out of this filth and stupidity to where she
can begin again. That’s all I want and that’s all
she wants. How could she and I ever come to¬
gether again? How could we kiss again as lovers
kiss? Poor defiled things we are! And all my
cruelty. You’re thinking of something else, Fanny.
You’re not thinking of Hetty and me.’

“ 'Maybe I am,’ said Fanny. ‘Yes, I think I
am. And so she is to go to Canada and begin
again—till her health comes back and her courage
comes back. It isn’t natural for a woman of her
temperament to live without a man to love her,
Harry.’

“ ‘Let her live and love,’ said I. ‘She’ll have
changed her name. Her friends will stand by her.
They won’t give her away. Let her forget. Let
her begin again.’

“ ‘With another man?’

“ ‘It may be.’

“ ‘You don’t mind the thought of that?’

“I was stung but I kept my temper. ‘Have I
any right to mind the thought of that now?’

“ ‘But you will. And you will go on living with
this wife you trust and respect. Who’s dull spirited
—dull as ditchwater.’

“ ‘No. Who’s my son’s mother. Who is trust¬
worthy. Whom I’m pledged to. And I’ve got my
work. It may seem nothing to you. It’s good
enough for me to give myself to it. Can’t I love

THE DREAM 289

Hetty, can’t I help her out of the net she’s in, and
yet not want to go back to impossible things?’

“ ‘Grey Monday mornings,’ said Fanny.

“ ‘As if all life wasn’t grey,’ I said.

“And then,” said Sarnac, “I remember that I
made a prophecy. I made it—when did I make
it? Two thousand years ago? Or two weeks ago?
I sat in Fanny’s little sitting-room, an old-world
creature amidst her old-world furnishings, and I
said that men and women would not always suffer
as we were suffering then. I said that we were still
poor savages, living only in the bleak dawn of
civilisation, and that we suffered because we w r ere
under-bred, under-trained and darkly ignorant of
ourselves, that the mere fact that we knew our own
unhappiness was the promise of better things and
that a day would come when charity and under¬
standing would light the world so that men and
women would no longer hurt themselves and one
another as they were doing now everywhere, uni¬
versally, in law and in restriction and in jealousy
and in hate, all round and about the earth.

“ ‘It is still too dark for us,’ I said, ‘to see clearly
where we are going, and everyone of us blunders
and stumbles and does wrong. Everyone. It is
idle for me to ask now what is the right thing for
me to do? Whatever I do now will be wrong. I
ought to go with Hetty and be her lover again—
easily I could do that and why should I deny it?—
and I ought to stick to Milly and the work I have
found in the world. Right road or left road, both
lead to sorrow and remorse, but there is scarcely
a soul in all this dark world, Fanny, who has not

290

THE DREAM

had to make or who will not presently have to make
a choice as hard. I will not pull the skies down
upon Milly, I cannot because she has put her faith
in me. You are my dear sister Fanny and I love
you and we have loved each other. Do you remem¬
ber how you used to take me round to school and
hold my hand at the crossings? Don’t make things
too hard for me now. Just help me to help Hetty.
Don’t tear me to pieces. She is still alive and
young and—Hetty. Out there—she at least can
begin again.’ ”

§ 7

“Nevertheless, I did see Hetty again before she
left England. There came a letter for me at Thun-
derstone House in which she proposed a meeting.

“ ‘You have been so kind to me/ she wrote. ‘It
is the next best thing to your never having left me.
You have been a generous dear. You’ve given back
happiness to me. I feel excited already at the
thought of the great liner and the ocean and full of
hope. We’ve got a sort of picture of the ship; it is
like a great hotel; with our cabin marked in it ex¬
actly where it is. Canada will be wonderful; Our
Lady of the Snows; and we are going by way of
New York, New York, like nothing else on earth,
cliffs and crags of windows, towering up to the sky.
And it’s wonderful to have new things again. I
sneak off to Fanny’s just to finger them over. I’m
excited—yes, and grateful—yes, and full of hope—
yes. And Harry, Harry, my heart aches and aches.
I want to see you again. I don’t deserve to but I
want to see you again. We began with a walk

THE DREAM

291

and why shouldn’t we end w T ith a walk? Thursday
and Friday all the gang will be at Leeds. I could
get away the whole day either day and it would be
a miracle if anyone knew. I wish we could have
that same old walk again. I suppose it’s too far and
impossible. We’ll save that, Harry, until we’re both
quite dead and then we’ll be two little swirls of
breeze in the grass or two bits of thistledown going
side by side. But there was that other walk we had
when we went to Shere and right over the North
Downs to Leatherhead. We looked across the
Weald and saw our own South Downs far, far away.
Pinewood and heather there was; hills beyond hills.
And the smoke of rubbish-burning.’

“I was to write to Fanny’s address.

“Of course we had that walk, we two half-resusci-
tated lovers. We did not make love at all though
we kissed when we met and meant to kiss when we
parted. We talked as I suppose dead souls might
talk of the world that had once been real. We
talked of a hundred different things—even of Sum¬
ner. Now that she was so near escape from him
her dread and hatred had evaporated. She said
Sumner had a passionate desire for her and a real
need of her and that it was not fair to him and very
bad for him that she despised him. It wounded
his self-respect. It made him violent and defiant.
A woman who cared for him, who would take the
pains to watch him and care for him as a woman
should do for a man, might have made something
of him. 'But I’ve never cared for him, Harry;
though I’ve tried. But I can see where things hurt
him. I can see they hurt him frightfully at times.

292

THE DREAM

It doesn’t hurt him any the less because he does
ugly things.’ He was vain, too, and ashamed of his
incapacity to get a sufficient living. He was drift¬
ing very rapidly to a criminal life and she had no
power over him to hold him back.

“I can still see Hetty and hear her voice, as we
walked along a broad bridle-path between great
rhododendron bushes, and she talked, grave and
balanced and kind she was, of this rogue who had
cheated her and outraged her and beaten her. It
was a new aspect of Hetty and yet at the same time
it was the old dear Hetty I had loved and wasted
and lost, clear-minded and swift, with an under¬
standing better than her will.

“We sat for a long time on the crest of the Downs
above Shere where the view was at its widest and
best, and we recalled the old days of happiness in
Kent and talked of the distances before us and of
crossing the sea and of France and so of the whole
wide world. T feel,’ she said, 'as I used to when
I was a child, at the end of the school quarter. I’m
going away to new things. Put on your frock, put
on your hat; the big ship is waiting. I am a
little frightened about it and rather happy. ... I
wish- But never mind that.’

“ 'You wish-?’

“ 'What else could I wish?’

'"You mean-?’

“ ‘It’s no good wishing.”

“ 'I’ve got to stick to the job I’ve taken. I’ve got
to see it through. But if you care to know it,
Hetty, I wish so too. My God!—if wishes could
release one!’

THE DREAM

293

“ ‘You’ve got your job here. I wouldn’t take
you away, Harry, if I could. Sturdy you are,
Harry, and you’ll go through with it and do the
work you’re made to do—and I’ll take what comes
to me. Over there I guess I’ll forget a lot about
Sumner and the things that have happened in be¬
tween—and think a lot about you and the South
Downs and this—how we sat side by side here.

“ ‘Perhaps,’ said Hetty, ‘heaven is a place like
this. A great hillside to which you come at last,
after all the tugging and pushing and the hoping
and the disappointments and the spurring and the
hungers and the cruel jealousies are done with and
finished for ever. Then here you sit down and rest.
And you aren’t alone. Your lover is here and he
sits beside you and you just touch shoulder to
shoulder, very close and very still, and your sins
are forgiven you; your blunders and misunder¬
standings they matter no longer; and the beauty
takes you and you dissolve into it, you dissolve into
it side by side and together you forget and fade
until at last nothing remains of all the distresses
and anger and sorrow, nothing remains of you at
all but the breeze upon the great hillside and sun¬
shine and everlasting peace. . . .

“ ‘All of which,’ said Hetty, rising abruptly to
her feet and standing over me, ‘is just empty noth¬
ingness. Oh Harry! Harry! One feels things and
when one tries to say them it is just words and
nonsense. We’ve hardly started on our way to
Leatherhead and you’ll have to be back by seven.
So get up, old Harry. Get up and come on. You
are the dearest person alive and it has been sweet

294

THE DREAM

of you to come with me to-day. I was half-afraid
you’d think it wasn’t wise. . . .’

“In the late afternoon we got to a place called
Little Bookham and there we had tea. About a
mile farther on was a railway station and we found
a train for London; it came in as we got on to the
platform.

“Everything had gone well so far and then came
the first gleam of disaster. At Leatherhead we sat
looking out on the station platform and a little
ruddy man came trotting along to get into the com¬
partment next to us, a little common fellow like an
ostler with a cigar under his Hebrew nose, and as
he was about to get in he glanced up at us. Doubt
and then recognition came into his eyes and at the
sight of him Hetty recoiled.

“ ‘Get in,’ said the guard, blowing his whistle,
and the little man was hustled out of sight.

“Hetty was very white. T know that man,’
she said, ‘and he knows me. He’s named Barnado.
What shall I do?’

“ ‘Nothing. Does he know you very well?’

“ ‘He’s been to our rooms—three or four times.’

“ He may not have been sure it was you.’

“ ‘I think he was. Suppose he were to come to
the window at the next station to make certain.
Could I pretend not to be myself? Refuse to recog¬
nise him or answer to my name?’

“ ‘But if he was convinced it was you in spite of
your bluff that would instantly make him suspi¬
cious and off he’d go to your husband! If on the
other hand you took it all quite casually—said I
was your cousin or your brother-in-law—he might

THE DREAM

295

think nothing of it and never even mention it to
Sumner. But making him suspicious would send
him off to Sumner right away. Anyhow, you go to
Liverpool to-morrow. I don’t see that his recog¬
nition of you matters.’

“ ‘I’m thinking of you,’ she said.

“ ‘But he doesn’t know who I am. So far as I
know none of that lot has seen me. . . .’

“The train slowed down at the next station. Mr.
Barnado appeared, cigar and all, bright-eyed and
curious.

“ ‘Blest if I didn’t say to myself that’s Hetty
Sumner!’ said Mr. Barnado. ‘Wonderful ’ow one
meets people!’

“ ‘My brother-in-law, Mr. Dyson,’ said Hetty,
introducing me. ‘We’ve been down to see his little
daughter.’

“ ‘I didn’t know you ’ad a sister, Mrs. Sumner.’

“ ‘I haven’t,’ said Hetty, with a note of pain in
her voice. ‘Mr. Dyson is a widower.’

“ ‘Sorry,’ said Mr. Barnado. ‘Stupid of me. And
what age might the little girl be, Mr. Dyson?’

“I found myself under the necessity of creating,
explaining and discussing an orphan daughter. Mr.
Barnado had three and was uncomfortably expert
about children and their phases of development.
He was evidently a model father. I did as well
as I could, I drew out Mr. Barnado’s family pride
rather than indulged my own, but I was immensely
relieved when Mr. Barnado exclaimed, ‘Gawd!
’Ere’s Epsom already! Glad to ’ave met you,
Mr.-’

“ ‘Damn!’ I said to myself. I had forgotten.

296

THE DREAM

“ ‘Dixon/ said Hetty hastily, and Mr. Barnado,
after effusive farewells, proceeded to remove himself
from the carriage.

“‘Thank Heaven!’ said Hetty, ‘he didn’t come
on to London. You’re the poorest liar, Harry, I’ve
ever known. As it is—no harm’s been done.’

“ ‘No harm’s been done,’ said I, but two or three
times before we reached the London station where
we were to part for ever, we recurred to the encoun¬
ter and repeated the reassuring formula that no
harm had been done.

“We parted at Victoria Station with very little
emotion. Mr. Barnado had brought us back, as it
were, to an everyday and incidental atmosphere.
We did not kiss each other again. The world about
us had become full now of observant eyes. My last
words to Hetty were ‘Everything’s all right!’ in a
business-like, reassuring tone, and the next day she
slipped off to join her friends at Liverpool and passed
out of my life for ever.”

§ 8

“For three or four days I did not feel this second
separation from Hetty very greatly. My mind was
still busy with the details of her departure. On
the third day she sent me a wireless message, as
we used to call it, to Thunderstone House. ‘Well
away/ she said. ‘Fine weather. Endless love and
gratitude.’ Then slowly as the days passed my sense
of loss grew upon me, the intimations of an immense
loneliness gathered and spread until they became
a cloud that darkened all my mental sky. I was
persuaded now that there was no human being who

THE DREAM

297

could make me altogether happy but Hetty, and
that for the second time I was rejecting the possi¬
bility of companionship with her. I had wanted
love, I perceived, without sacrifice, and in that old
world, it seems to me now, love was only possible
at an exorbitant price, sacrifice of honour, sacrifice
of one’s proper work in the world, humiliations and
distresses. I had shirked the price of Hetty and
she was going from me, taking out of my life for
ever all those sweet untellable things that were the
essence of love, the little names, the trivial careless
caresses, the exquisite gestures of mind and body,
the moments of laughter and pride and perfect
understanding. Day by day love went westward
from me. Day and night I was haunted by a more
and more vivid realisation of a great steamship,
throbbing and heaving its way across the crests and
swelling waves of the Atlantic welter. The rolling
black coal-smoke from its towering funnels poured
before the wind. Now I would see that big ocean¬
going fabric in the daylight; now lit brightly from
stem to stern, under the stars.

“I was full of unappeasable regret, I indulged
in endless reveries of a flight across the Atlantic in
pursuit of Hetty, of a sudden dramatic appearance
before her;—‘Hetty, I can’t stand it. I’ve come’
—and all the time I stuck steadfastly to the course
I had chosen. I worked hard and late at Thunder-
stone House; I did my best to shunt my imagina¬
tion into new channels by planning two new quasi-
educational publications, and I set myself to take
Milly out to restaurants to dinner and to the theatre
and to interesting shows. And in the midst of some

298

THE DREAM

picture-show perhaps I would find my rebel mind
speculating what sort of thing Hetty would have
said of it, had she been there. There was a little
show of landscapes at the Alpine Gallery and several
were pictures of Downland scenery and one showed
a sunlit hillside under drowsy white clouds. It was
almost like seeing Hetty.

“It was exactly a week after Hetty’s landing in
New York that I first encountered Sumner. It was
my usual time of arrival and I was just turning out
of Tottenham Court Road into the side street that
led to the yard of Thunderstone House. There was
a small public-house in this byway and two men
were standing outside it in attitudes of expectation.
One of them stepped out to accost me. He was a
little flushed Jewish man, and for the moment I did
not recognise him at all.

“ 'Mr. Smith?’ said he, and scrutinised me queerly.

“ 'At your service,’ said I.

“ ‘Not by any chance Mr. Dyson or Dixon, eh?’
he asked with a leer.

“‘Barnado!’ cried my memory and placed him.
My instant recognition must have betrayed itself in
my face. Our eyes met and there were no secrets
between them. ‘No, Mr. Barnado,’ I said with
incredible stupidity; ‘my name’s just plain Smith.’

“ ‘Don’t mention it, Mr. Smith, don’t mention
it,’ said Mr. Barnado with extreme politeness. ‘I
had a sort of fancy I might have met you before.’
And turning to his companion and raising his voice
a little, he said, ‘That’s him all right, Sumner—sure
as eggs are eggs.’

“Sumner! I glanced at this man who had given

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299

my life so disastrous a turn. He was very much my
own height and build, fair with a blotched com¬
plexion and wearing a checked grey suit and an
experienced-looking grey felt hat. He might have
been my unsuccessful half-brother. Our eyes met
in curiosity and antagonism. Tm afraid I’m not
the man you want/ I said to Earnado and went on
my way. I didn’t see any advantage in an imme¬
diate discussion in that place. I perceived that an
encounter was inevitable, but I meant it to happen
amidst circumstances of my own choice and after
I had had time to consider the situation properly.
I heard something happen behind me and Barnado
said: ‘Shut up, you fool! You’ve found out what
you w^ant to know.’ I went through the passages
and rooms of Thunderstone House to my office and
there, when I was alone, I sat down in my arm-chair
and swore very heartily. Every day since the de¬
parture of Hetty I had been feeling more and more
sure that this at least was not going to happen. I
had thought that Sumner was very easily and safely
and completely out of the story.

“I took my writing-pad and began to sketch out
the situation. ‘Ends to be secured / I wrote.

“ ‘No. 1. Hetty must not be traced.

“ ‘No. 2. Milly must hear nothing of this.

“ ‘No. 3. No blackmailing.’

“I considered. ‘But if a lump payment,’ I began.
This I scratched out again.

“I had to scheme out the essential facts. ‘What
does S. know? What evidence exists? Of what?
No clue to lead to Fanny? There is nothing but

300

THE DREAM

that journey in the train. He will have a moral
certainty but will it convince anyone else?’

“I wrote a new heading: ‘How to handle them?’

“I began to sketch grotesques and arabesques over
my paper as I plotted. Finally I tore it up into
very small fragments and dropped it into my waste-
paper basket. A messenger-girl rapped and came
in with a paper slip, bearing the names of Fred
Sumner and Arthur Barnado.

“ ‘They’ve not put the business they want to talk
about/ I remarked.

“ ‘They said you’d know, Sir.’

“ ‘No excuse. I want everybody to fill in that,’
I said. ‘Just say I’m too busy to see strangers who
don’t state their business. And ask them to complete
the form.’

“Back came the form: ‘Enquiry about Mr. Sum¬
ner’s missing wife.’

“I considered it calmly. ‘I don’t believe we ever
had the manuscript. Say I’m engaged up to half¬
past twelve. Then I could have a talk of ten min¬
utes with Mr. Sumner alone. Make that clear. I
don’t see where Mr. Barnado comes in. Make it
clear it’s a privilege to see me.’

“My messenger did not reappear. I resumed my
meditations on the situation. There was time for
a lot of aggressive energy to evaporate before half-
past twelve. Probably both of the men had come
in from the outskirts and would have nowhere to
wait but the streets or a public-house. Mr. Barnado
might want to be back upon his own business at
Epsom. He’d played his part in identifying me.
Anyhow, I didn’t intend to have any talk with

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301

Sumner before a witness. If he reappeared with
Barnado I should refuse to see them. For Barnado
alone I had a plan and for Sumner I had a plan,
but not for the two of them together.

“My delaying policy was a good one. At half¬
past twelve Sumner came alone and was shown up
to me.

“ ‘Sit down there,’ I said abruptly and leant back
in my chair and stared at his face and waited in
silence for him to begin.

“For some moments he did not speak. He had
evidently expected me to open with some sort of
question and he had come ready loaded with a reply.
To be plumped into a chair and looked at, put him
off his game. He tried to glare at me and I looked
at his face as if I was looking at a map. As I did
so I found my hatred for him shrinking and chang¬
ing. It wasn’t a case for hatred. He had such a
poor, mean, silly face, a weak arrangement of plau¬
sibly handsome features. Every now and then it
was convulsed by a nervous twitch. His straw-
coloured moustache was clipped back more on one
side than the other, and his rather frayed necktie
had slipped down to display his collar stud and the
grubbiness of his collar. He had pulled his mouth
a little askew and thrust his face forward in an
attempt at fierceness, and his rather watery blue
eyes were as open and as protruded as he could
manage.

“ ‘Where’s my wife, Smith?’ he said at last.

“ ‘Out of my reach, Mr. Sumner, and out of yours.’

“ ‘Where’ve you hid her?’

“ ‘She’s gone,’ I said. ‘It’s no work of mine.’

302

THE DREAM

“ ‘She’s come back to you.’

“I shook my head.

“ ‘You know where she is?’

“ ‘She’s gone clear, Sumner. You let her go.’

“ ‘Let her go! You let her go, but I’m not going
to. I’m not that sort. Here’s this girl you marry
and mess about with and when she comes across a
man who’s a bit more of a man than you are and
handles her as a woman ought to be handled, you
go and chuck her out and divorce her, divorce her
with her child coming, and then start planning and
plotting to get her away from the man she’s given
her love to-’

“He stopped for want of words or breath. He
wanted to exasperate me and start a shouting match.
I said nothing.

“ ‘I want Hetty back,’ he said. ‘She’s my wife
and I want her back. She’s mine and the sooner
this foolery stops the better.’

“I sat up to the desk and put my elbows on it.

“ ‘You won’t get her back,’ I said very quietly.
‘What are you going to do about it?’

“ ‘By God! I’ll have her back—if I swing for it.’

“ ‘Exactly. And what are you going to do?’

“ ‘What can’t I do? I’m her husband.’

“ ‘Well?’

“ ‘You’ve got her.’

“ ‘Not a scrap of her.’

“ ‘She’s missing. I can go to the police.’

“ ‘Go to them. What will they do?’

“ ‘I can put them on to you.’

“ ‘Not a bit of it. They won’t bother about me.
If your wife’s missing and you go to the police,

THE DREAM

303

they’ll clear up all your gang with their enquiries.
They’ll be only too glad of the chance. Trouble
me! They’ll dig up the cellars in your house and
in your previous house to find the body. They’ll
search you and ransack you. And what they don’t
do to you, your pals will.’

“Sumner leaned forward and grimaced like a
gargoyle to give his words greater emphasis. ‘Yew
were the last man seen with her,’ he said.

“ ‘Not a scrap of evidence.’

“Sumner cursed vigorously. ‘He saw you.’

“ ‘I can deny that absolutely. Frowsty little wit¬
ness your friend Barnado. Don’t be too sure he’ll
stick it. Nasty business if a woman disappears and
you find yourself trying to fix something that won’t
hold water on to someone her husband dislikes. If
I were you, Sumner, I wouldn’t take that line. Even
if he backs you up, what does it prove? You know
of nobody else who pretends to have seen me with
Hetty. You won’t be able to find anybody. . . .’

“Mr. Sumner extended his hand towards my table.
He was too far away to bang it properly so he pulled
his chair up closer. The bang when it came was
ineffective. ‘Look ’ere,’ he said and moistened his
lips. ‘I want my Hetty back and I’m going to have
her back. You’re precious cool and cucumberish
and all that just now, but by God! I’ll warm you
up before I’ve done with you. You think you can
get her away and bluff me off. Never made such a
mistake in your life. Suppose I don’t go to the
police. Suppose I go for direct action. Suppose
I come round to your place, and make a fuss with
your wife.”

304

THE DREAM

“ 'That will be a nuisance/ I said.

“He followed up his advantage. 'A masterpiece
of a nuisance.’

“I considered the forced fierceness of his face.

“ 'I shall say I know nothing about your wife’s
disappearance and that you are a blackmailing liar.
People will believe me. My wife will certainly
believe me. She’d make herself do so if your story
was ten times as possible. Your friend Barnado
and you will make a pretty couple of accusers. I
shall say you are a crazy jealous fool, and if you keep
the game up I shall have you run in. I’d not be
altogether sorry to have you run in. There’s one
or two little things I don’t like you for. I’d not be
so very sorry to get quits.’

“I had the better of him. He was baffled and
angry but I saw now plainly that he had no real
fight in him.

“ 'And you know where she is?’ he said.

“I was too full of the spirit of conflict now to be
discreet. ‘I know where she is. And you don’t get
her—whatever you do. And as I said before, What
can you do about it?’

“ 'My God!’ he said. ‘My own wife.’

“I leant back with the air of a man who had fin¬
ished an interview. I looked at my wrist-watch.

“He stood up.

“I looked up at him brightly. ‘Well?’ I said.

“'Look here!’ he spluttered. ‘I don’t stand this.
By God! I tell you I want Hetty. I want her. I
want her and I’ll do what I like with her. D’you
think I’ll take this? Me? She’s mine, you dirty
thief!’

THE DREAM

305

“I took up a drawing for an illustration and held
it in my hand, regarding him with an expression of
mild patience that maddened him.

“ ‘Didn’t I marry her—when I needn’t have? If
you wanted her, why the devil didn’t you keep her
when you had her? I tell you I won’t stand it.’

“ ‘My dear Sumner, as I said before, What can
you do about it?’

“He leant over the desk, shook a finger as though
it was a pistol barrel in my face. ‘I’ll let daylight
through you,’ he said. ‘I’ll let daylight through you.’

“ ‘I’ll take my chance of that,’ I said.

“He expressed his opinion of me for a bit.

“ ‘I won’t argue your points,’ I said. ‘I guess we’re
about through with this interview. Don’t shock
my clerk, please, when she comes in.’ And I rang
the bell on my desk.

“His parting shot was feeble. ‘You’ve not heard
the last of me. I mean what I told you.’

“ ‘Mind the step,’ said I.

“The door closed and left me strung up and trem¬
bling with excitement but triumphant. I felt I had
beaten him and that I could go on beating him. It
might be he would shoot. He’d probably got a
revolver. But it was ten to one he’d take the trouble
to get a fair chance at me and screw himself up to
shooting pitch. And with his loose twitching face
and shaky hand it was ten to one against his hitting
me. He’d aim anyhow. He’d shoot too soon. And
if he shot me it was ten to one he only wounded me
slightly. Then I’d carry through my story against
him. Milly might be shaken for a time, but I’d get
the thing right again with her.

306

THE DREAM

“I sat for a long time turning over the possibilities
of the case. The more I considered it the more satis¬
fied I was with my position. It was two o’clock and
long past my usual lunch time when I went off to
my club. I treated myself to the unusual luxury of
a half-bottle of champagne.”

§ 9

“I never believed Sumner would shoot me until
I was actually shot.

“He waylaid me in the passage-way to the yard
of Thunderstone House as I was returning from
lunch just a week after our first encounter and when
I was beginning to hope he had accepted his defeat.
He had been drinking, and as soon as I saw his
flushed face, half-angry and half-scared, I had an
intimation of what might befall. I remember that
I thought then that if anything happened he must
get away because otherwise he might be left to tell
his tale after I was dead. But I didn’t realty believe
he was man enough to shoot and even now I do not
believe that. He fired through sheer lack of nervous
and muscular co-ordination.

“He did not produce his pistol until I was close
up to him. 'Now then,’ said he, ‘you’re for it.
Where’s my wife?’ and out came the pistol a yard
from me.

“I forget my answer. I probably said, 'Put that
away’ or something of that sort. And then I may
have seemed about to snatch it. The report of the
pistol, which sounded very loud to me, came at once,
and a feeling as though I’d been kicked in the small
of the back. The pistol was one of those that go

THE DREAM

307

on firing automatically as long as the trigger is
gripped. It fired two other shots, and one got my
knee and smashed it. 'Damn the thing!’ he screamed
and threw it down as though it had stung him. 'Get
out, you fool. Run!’ I said as I lurched towards
him, and then as I fell I came within a foot of his
terrified face as he dashed past me towards the main
thoroughfare. He thrust me back with his hand as
I reeled upon him.

"I think I rolled over on to my back into a sitting
position after I fell, because I have a clear impres¬
sion of him vanishing like the tail of a bolting rabbit
into Tottenham Court Road. I saw a van and an
omnibus pass across the space at the end of the
street, heedless altogether of the pistol shots that
had sounded so terrible in my ears. A girl and a
man passed with equal indifference. He was clear.
Poor little beast! I’d stolen his Hetty. And now-

"I was very clear-headed. A little numbed where
I had been hit but not in pain. I was chiefly aware
of my smashed knee, which looked very silly with
its mixture of torn trouser and red stuff and a little
splintered pink thing that I supposed was an end of
bone.

"People from nowhere were standing about me
and saying things to me. They had come out of
the yard or from the public-house. I made a swift
decision. 'Pistol went off in my hand,’ I said, and
shut my eyes.

"Then a fear of a hospital came upon me. 'My
home quite handy,’ I said. ‘Eight Chester Terrace,
Regent’s Park. Get me there, please.’

“I heard them repeating the address and I recog-

308

THE DREAM

nised the voice of Crane & Newberry’s door porter.
‘That’s right/ he was saying. ‘It’s Mr. Mortimer
Smith. Anything I can do for you, Mr. Smith?’

“I do not remember much of the details of what
followed. When they moved me there was pain. I
seem to have been holding on to what I meant to
say and do, and my memory does not seem to have
recorded anything else properly. I may have fainted
once or twice. Newberry was in it somehow. I
think he took me home in his car. ‘How did it
happen?’ he asked. That I remember quite clearly.

“ ‘The thing went off in my hand,’ I said.

“One thing I was very certain about. Whatever
happened they were not going to hang that poor,
silly, hunted cheat, Sumner. Whatever happened,
the story of Hetty must not come out. If it did,
Milly would think only one thing: that I had been
unfaithful to her and that Sumner had killed me on
that account. Hetty was all right now. I needn’t
bother about Hetty any more. I had to think of
Milly—and Sumner. It is queer, but I seem to have
known I was mortally wounded from the very instant
I was shot.

“Milly appeared, full of solicitude.

“ ‘Accident,’ I said to her with all my strength.
‘Went off in my hand.’

“My own bed.

“Clothes being cut away. Round my knee the
cloth had stuck. The new grey suit which I’d meant
should last the whole summer.

“Then two strangers became conspicuous, doctors,
I suppose, whispering, and one of them had his
sleeves up and showed a pair of fat pink arms.

THE DREAM

309

Sponges and a tinkle of water dripping into a basin.
They prodded me about. Damn! That hurt! Then
stinging stuff. What was the good of it? I was in
the body they were prodding, and I knew all about
it and I was sure that I was a dead man.

“Milly again.

“‘My dear,’ I whispered. ‘Dear!’ and her poor,
tearful face beamed love upon me.

“Valiant Milly! Things had never been fair to
her.

“Fanny? Had Newberry gone to fetch her? Any¬
how he had vanished.

“She’d say nothing about Hetty. She was as safe
as—safe as what?—what did one say?—anything
safe.

“Poor dears! What a fuss they were all in. It
seemed almost shameful of me to be glad that I
was going out of it all. But I was glad. This pistol
shot had come like the smashing of a window in a
stuffy room. My chief desire was to leave kind and
comforting impressions on those poor survivors who
might still have to stay on in the world of muddle
for years and years. Life! What a muddle and a
blundering it had been! I’d never have to grow
old now anyhow. . . .

“There was an irruption. People coming in from
the dressing-room. One was a police inspector in
uniform. The other showed policeman through his
plainclothes. Now was the time for it! I was quite
clear-headed—quite. I must be careful what I said.
If I didn’t want to say anything I could just close
my eyes.

“ ‘Bleeding internally,’ said someone.

310

THE DREAM

“Then the police inspector sat down on the bed.
What a whale he was!—and asked me questions. I
wondered if anyone had caught a glimpse of Sumner.
Sumner, bolting like a rabbit. I must risk that.

“ Tt went off in my hand/ I said.

“ ‘What was he saying? How long had I had
that revolver?

“ ‘Bought it this lunch time/ I said.

“Did he ask why? He did. ‘Keep up my shooting.’

“WEere? He wanted to know where. ‘Highbury.’

“ ‘What part of Highbury?’ They wanted to trace
the pistol. That wouldn’t do. Give Mr. Inspector
a paper chase. ‘Near Highbury.’

“ ‘Not in Highbury?’

“I decided to be faint and stupid. ‘That way/ I
said faintly.

“ ‘A pawnshop?’

“Best not to answer. Then as if by an effort, ‘Lil’
shop.’

“ ‘Unredeemed pledges?’

“I said nothing to that. I was thinking of another
touch to the picture I was painting.

“I spoke with weak indignation. ‘I didn’t think
it was loaded. How was I to know it was loaded?
It ought not to have been sold—loaded like that.
I was just looking at it-’

“I Stopped short and shammed exhaustion. Then
I felt that I was not shamming exhaustion. I was
exhausted. Gods! but the stuffing was out of me!
I was sinking, sinking, out of the bedroom, out from
among this group of people. They were getting
little and faint and flimsy. Was there anything
more to say? Too late if there was. I was falling

THE DREAM 311

asleep, falling into a sleep, so profound, so fathom¬
less. . . .

“Far away now was the little roomful of people,
and infinitely small.

“'He’s going!’ somebody said in a minute voice.

“I seemed to come back for an instant.

“I heard the rustle of Milly’s dress as she came
across the room to me. . . .

“And then, then I heard Hetty’s voice again and
opened my eyes and saw Hetty bending down over
me—in that lovely place upon this mountain-side.
Only Hetty had become my dear Sunray who is
mistress of my life. And the sunshine was on us
and on her face, and I stretched because my back
was a little stiff and one of my knees was twisted.”

“ ‘Wake up! I said,’ ” said Sunray. “ ‘Wake up,’
and I shook you.”

“And then we came and laughed at you,” said
Radiant. “Firefly and I.”

“And you said, ‘then there is another life,’ ” said
Firefly. “And the tale is only a dream! It has
been a good tale, Sarnac, and somehow you have
made me think it was true.”

“As it is,” said Sarnac. “For I am as certain I
was Henry Mortimer Smith yesterday as I am that
I am Sarnac here and now.”

CHAPTER THE EIGHTH

THE EPILOGUE

§ 1

The guest-master poked the sinking fire into a
last effort. “So am I,” he said, and then with pro¬
found conviction, “That tale is true.”

“But how could it be true?” asked Willow.

“I should be readier to believe it true if Sarnac
had not brought in Sunray as Hetty,” said Radiant.
“It was very dreamlike, the way Hetty grew more
and more like his dear lady and at last dissolved
altogether into her.”

“But if Smith was a sort of anticipation of Sar¬
nac,” said Starlight, “then it was natural for him to
choose as his love a sort of anticipation of Sunray.”

“But are there any other anticipations in the
story?” asked Willow. “Did you recognise any
other people w T ho are intimate with you both? Is
there a Fanny in this world? Is there a Matilda
Good or a brother Ernest? Was Sarnac’s mother
like Martha Smith?”

“That tale,” said the guest-master, stoutly, “was
no dream. It was a memory floating up out of
the deep darkness of forgotten things into a kindred
brain.”

Sarnac thought, “What is a personality but a
memory? If the memory of Harry Mortimer Smith

312

THE DREAM

313

is in my brain, then I am Smith. I feel as sure
that I was Smith two thousand years ago as that
I was Sarnac this morning. Sometimes before this
in my dreams I have had a feeling that I lived again
forgotten lives. Have none of you felt that?”

“I dreamt the other day,” said Radiant, “that
I was a panther that haunted a village of huts in
which lived naked children and some very tooth¬
some dogs. And how I was hunted for three years
and shot at five times before I was killed. I can
remember how I killed an old woman gathering
sticks and hid part of her body under the roots of
a tree to finish it on the morrow. It was a very
vivid dream. And as I dreamt it it was by no means
horrible. But it was not a clear and continuous
dream like yours. A panther’s mind is not clear
and continuous, but passes from flashes of interest
to interludes of apathy and utter forgetfulness.

“When children have dreams of terror, of being
in the wild with prowling beasts, of long pursuits
and hairbreadth escapes, perhaps it is the memory
of some dead creature that lives again in them?”
asked Starlight. “What do we know of the stuff
of memory that lies on the other side of matter?
What do we know of the relations of consciousness
to matter and energy? For four thousand years
men have speculated about these things, and we
know no more to-day than they did in Athens when
Plato taught and Aristotle studied. Science in¬
creases and the power of man grows but only inside
the limits of life’s conditions. We may conquer
space and time, but we shall never conquer the
mystery of what we are, and why we can be matter

314

THE DREAM

that feels and wills. My brother and I have much
to do with animals and more and more do I perceive
that what they are I am. They are instruments
with twenty strings while we have ten thousand,
but they are instruments like ourselves; what plays
upon them plays upon us, and what kills them kills
us. Life and death alike are within the crystal
sphere that limits us for ever. Life cannot penetrate
and death will not penetrate that limitation. What
memories are we cannot tell. If I choose to believe
that they float away like gossamer nets when we
die, and that they float I know not where, and that
they can come back presently into touch with other
such gossamer nets, who can contradict me? Maybe
life from its very beginning has been spinning
threads and webs of memories. Not a thing in the
past, it may be, that has not left its memories about
us. Some day we may learn to gather in that for¬
gotten gossamer, we may learn to weave its strands
together again, until the whole past is restored to
us and life becomes one. Then perhaps the crystal
sphere will break. And however that may be, and
however these things may be explained, I can well
believe without any miracles that Sarnac has
touched down to the real memory of a human life
that lived and suffered two thousand years ago.
And I believe that, because of the reality of the
story he told. I have felt all along that whatever
interrupting question we chose to ask, had we asked
what buttons he wore on his jacket or how deep the
gutters were at the pavement edge or what was the
price he had paid for his cigarettes, he would have

THE DREAM 315

been ready with an answer, more exact and sure
than any historian could have given.”

“And I too believe that,” said Sunray. “I have
no memory of being Hetty, but in everything he
said and did, even in his harshest and hardest acts,
Smith and Sarnac were one character. I do not
question for a moment that Sarnac lived that life.”

§ 2

“But the hardness of it!” cried Firefly; “the
cruelty! The universal heartache!”

“It could have been only a dream,” persisted
Willow.

“It is not the barbarism I think of,” said Firefly;
“not the wars and diseases, the shortened, crippled
lives, the ugly towns, the narrow countryside, but
worse than that the sorrow of the heart, the uni¬
versal unkindness, the universal failure to under¬
stand or care for the thwarted desires and needs of
others. As I think of Sarnac’s story I cannot think
of any one creature in it who was happy—as we
are happy. It is all a story of love crossed, imagina¬
tions like flies that have fallen into gum, things
withheld and things forbidden. And all for nothing.
All for pride and spite. Not all that world had a
giver who gave with both hands. . . . Poor Milly!
Do you think she did not know how coldly you
loved her, Sarnac? Do you think her jealousy was
not born of a certainty and a fear? ... A lifetime,
a whole young man’s lifetime, a quarter of a century,
and this poor Harry Smith never once met a happy
soul and came only once within sight of happiness!
And he was just one of scores and hundreds of

316

THE DREAM

millions! They went heavily and clumsily and
painfully, oppressing and obstructing each other,
from the cradle to the grave.”

This was too much for the guest-master, who
almost wailed aloud. “But surely there was happi¬
ness! Surely there were moods and phases of
happiness!”

“In gleams and flashes,” said Sarnac. “But I
verily believe that what Firefly says is true. In
all my world there were no happy lives.”

“Not even children?”

“Lives, I said, not parts of lives. Children would
laugh and dance for a while if they were born in
Hell.”

“And out of that darkness,” said Radiant; “in
twenty short centuries our race has come to the
light and tolerance, the sweet freedoms and charities
of our lives to-day.”

“Which is no sort of comfort to me,” said Firefly,
“when I think of the lives that have been.”

“Unless this is the solution,” the guest-master
cried, “that everyone is presently to dream back
the lives that have gone. Unless the poor memory-
ghosts of all those sad lives that have been are to
be brought into the consolation of our happiness.
Here, poor souls, for your comfort is the land of
heart’s desire and all your hopes come true. Here
you live again in your ampler selves. Here lovers
are not parted for loving and your loves are not your
torment. ... Now I see why men must be im¬
mortal, for otherwise the story of man’s martyrdom
is too pitiful to tell. Many good men there w T ere
like me, jolly men with a certain plumpness, men

THE DREAM

317

with an excellent taste for wine and cookery, who
loved men almost as much as they loved the food
and drink that made men, and they could not do
the jolly work I do and make comfort and happiness
every day for fresh couples of holiday friends.
Surely presently I shall find the memories of the
poor licensed innkeeper I was in those ancient days,
the poor, overruled, ill-paid publican, handing out
bad stuff in wrath and shame, I shall find all his
troubles welling up again in me. Consoled in this
good inn. If it was I who suffered in those days, I
am content, but if it was some other good fellow who
died and never came to this, then there is no justice
in the heart of God. So I swear by immortality
now and henceforth—not for greed of the future
but in the name of the wasted dead.

“Look!” the guest-master continued. “Morning
comes and the cracks at the edge of the door-curtain
grow brighter than the light within. Go all of you
and watch the mountain glow. I will mix you a
warm bowl of drink and then we will sleep for an
hour or so before you breakfast and go your way.”

§ 3

“It was a life,” said Sarnac, “and it was a dream,
a dream within this life; and this life too is a dream.
Dreams within dreams, dreams containing dreams,
until we come at last, maybe, to the Dreamer of all
dreams, the Being who is all beings. Nothing is
too wonderful for life and nothing is too beautiful.”

He got up and thrust back the great curtain of
the guest-house room. “All night we have been

318

THE DREAM

talking and living in the dark Ages of Confusion
and now the sunrise is close at hand.”

He went out upon the portico of the guest-house
and stood still, surveying the great mountains that
rose out of cloud and haze, dark blue and mysterious
in their recesses and soaring up at last into the flush
of dawn.

He stood quite still and all the world seemed still,
except that, far away and far below, a mist of sounds
beneath the mountain mists, a confusion of birds
was singing.

V

DATE

DUE / DATE DE RETOUR

CARR MCLEAN 38-297